China at Forefront of Children's Book Market

Chinese children's books are making a global stand in terms of approaching literature.  The following post helps explain.

Mulan:  A Story in Chinese
and English
Li Jian and Yijin Wert

Ahmad Redza Khairuddin, president of the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY), made the remarks at the Bologna 2014 Children's Book Fair in Italy.

China's publishing industry is not only helped by the country's huge population and fast-growing economy, but also benefits from cultural richness and government support, he noted.

The industry's collaboration with foreign experts, while enriching the content of children's books in China, shares a lot of Chinese content with the rest of the world, the president said, adding that he believed the entire world will benefit from Chinese children's literature.

Because Dragons Love Milk
Marie Chow

According to Li Xueqiang, president of China Children's Press and Publication Group (CCPPG), children not only need to know the culture and tradition of their own country, but also the cultural environment of other countries.

For this reason, Li said, his publishing group was giving an opportunity to both Chinese writers and foreign illustrators to collaborate on the creation of outstanding new works.

Li made the remarks at the four-day book fair that closed Thursday. The event was an occasion for Chinese writers to exchange views with their counterparts from other countries inside China's 266-square meter space.

Father's Chinese Opera
Rich Lo

Brazilian illustrator Roger Mello, recipient of the 2014 Hans Christian Andersen Award, one of the oldest and most prestigious international awards in children's literature, highlighted what he called "a concern in China to bring high-quality books to children, which is very important because China is a reference for the world."

Canadian publisher and former IBBY President Patsy Aldana echoed Mello's viewpoint that the peculiarity and uniqueness of Chinese culture helped Chinese books for children get "better and better every year."

At a time when the global publishing situation was difficult, some of the major multinationals have become too commercial and oriented toward sales, she noted.

Ming's Adventure in the Foreign City
Li Jian and Yijin Wert

The result, she added, was that "the quality of books from the United States and Britain has really gone down."

Meanwhile, Aldana said, China saw "a marked increase in the quality of books and illustrations, the diversity of publishing and the new ways of telling stories."

"The more books are created to really do something important for children, the better chance they have of traveling around the world," she said, adding that she believed some excellent books in China "will be read by children everywhere."

Newly Discovered Pearl S. Buck Novel to be Published

A 40-year-old unpublished Pearl S. Buck manuscript was recently discovered in storage.  The people who found the book sent it back to the Buck family, and now the world will enjoy it. Open Road Integrated Media and InkWell Management will team up to publish the book.

Pearl S. Buck

The Eternal Wonder will be published on October 22, bringing the Pulitzer & Nobel Prize-winning author’s newly discovered work as a digital book and paperback. Open Road already publishes 28 backlist books by Buck, including The Big Wave and The Good Earth. Here’s more about the book, from the release:

The Eternal Wonder  is a personal and passionate fictional exploration of the themes that meant so much to Buck in her life. It tells the coming-of-age story of Randolph Colfax, an extraordinarily gifted young man whose search for meaning and purpose leads him to New York, England, Paris, a mission patrolling the demilitarized zone in Korea that will change his life forever—and, ultimately, to love.

Buck’s son Edgar S. Walsh, who is also in charge of her literary estate, said her family is baffled as to how the manuscript made its way to Texas.
“After my mother died in Vermont, her personal possessions were not carefully controlled,” he told the New York Times. “The family didn’t have access. Various things were stolen. Somebody in Vermont ran off with this thing, and it eventually ended up in Texas.”

 So who was this woman?  Alas, not much is known today about her, only her name in a rather oblique way.  Let me say a bit about her.  Pearl S. Buck  was born Pearl Comfort Sydenstricker on June 26, 1892, in Hillsboro, West Virginia. Her parents, both Presbyterian missionaries, decided to go back to the Chinese village of Chinkiang with 5-month-old Pearl in tow.  She lived there for 20 years before returning to the US permanently.  “The Good Earth” was published in 1931.

She was the first female writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, securing the award in 1938. In addition, her novel “The Good Earth” won the Pulitzer Prize in 1938.  She died in 1973. An amazing force in American Letters, Pearl S. Buck was a role model for so many people on so many levels.