Dear all,
Well actually perhaps we could take a small step to highlight the
wrongness of the practice of homogenising books. Wrong in that
children love imagining other children's lives and all the
idiosyncratic details of different cultures.
Sandie sent out a Call for Papers recently for the ejournal we
co-edit, the next issue is on 'Intercultural approaches to English
language education through children?s literature'. Some of us on this
list might consider writing a combined article, e.g. the educational
importance of changing perspective to other ways of life while reading
and looking at pictures - particularly while children are still young
and not so strongly enculturated into a particular culture. There
would be plenty of time for several people to contribute ideas and
experience, from different perspectives all over the world, the
deadline is not till 01.05.13. Is this an idea?
Maybe some publishers would take note - the EFL market is huge, and in
that market the potential of intercultural learning is crucial.
Currently the primary EFL market is dominated by textbooks that are
either homogenised or stereotyped, and without the wonderful stories
and illustrations that picturebooks can offer.
Janice
Dr. des. Janice Bland
Department of English and American Studies
University of Paderborn
Warburger Str. 100, 33098 Paderborn
05251 60-2861
-----------------------------------
OUT NOW: Bland, Janice and Lütge, Christiane (eds) (2013), Children's
Literature in Second Language Education. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
-----------------
CLELEjournal - peer-reviewed, biannual and open access: Children's
Literature in English Language Education http://www.clelejournal.org/
ISSN 2195-5212
Quoting Marianne Martens <[log in to unmask]>:
> Sadly, I doubt that this has anything to do with children's tastes, and
> everything to do with commerce. (And by the way - those of us working in
> the company were very much against this homogenization of books).
>
> It certainly would be interesting to see empirical research in this area!
>
> --Marianne
>
> On Fri, Feb 1, 2013 at 2:17 PM, Catherine Butler
> <[log in to unmask]>wrote:
>
>> I won't deny that my instinctive reaction to this practice is quite
>> hostile. It seems patronizing to the children of the target culture (US in
>> this case) to think that they would be unable to process the fact that
>> other people live differently from them, and also hypocritical given that
>> so many of the same publishers make a song and dance about 'diversity'.
>>
>> Of course, publishers need to make money, and no doubt that is their
>> primary reason for producing a or 'transnational' Anglophone edition. But I
>> am curious to know whether anyone has produced empirical research either
>> commercially or academically that demonstrates that such editions really
>> are more popular with more children than regionally or nationally
>> distinctive ones? Or is it simply the result of untested "common sense"
>> (which isn't always reliable!)?.
>>
>> Cathy
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Feb 1, 2013 at 6:01 PM, Martens, Marianne <
>> [log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>
>>> Cynthia - you are absolutely correct. When I worked at North-South Books
>>> (Nord-Süd Verlag) in New York in the 1990s, we worked hard to create
>>> transnational editions that could be sold anywhere. In the case of the
>>> English language, you will notice that in the book The Rainbow Fish, the
>>> word color/colour never appears - precisely to avoid the different
>>> spellings.
>>>
>>> In the case of illustrations, we once had a book about Iceland, and a
>>> buyer at a major chain told us to take Iceland-centric elements (i.e.
>>> trolls, I think!) out of the story so that a girl, for example in Montana,
>>> would be able to relate to the story. Our choice was to edit the book, or
>>> they would not buy copies. With the shrinking marketplace, publishers are
>>> not really given any choice at all. Very unfortunate!
>>>
>>> Marianne Martens, Ph.D.
>>> Assistant Professor
>>> Kent State University
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Feb 1, 2013, at 12:41 PM, Cynthia Nugent <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>>
>>> Sadly, the depiction of distinct regions is rapidly disappearing with the
>>> push to sell internationally - in other words, sell in the US. You no
>>> longer find UK life lovingly depicted as you did in the Ahlbergs's and
>>> Graham Oakley's Church Mice books. British picturebook illustrators are
>>> instructed to remove things like red mailboxes and double decker buses and
>>> to show cars driving down the middle of the road to fudge distinctions in
>>> driving practices. In Canada, many children's publishers have adopted
>>> American spelling has the house style and eliminate Canadian place names or
>>> anything that sets the book in Canada in an effort to sell in the US.
>>> Here's a link to one paper on this
>>>
>>>
>>> http://keimena.ece.uth.gr/main/t13/globalization_and_pic_books_susan_stan_final_english.pdf
>>>
>>> Cynthia Nugent
>>> UBC MACL student
>>> Author/illustrator
>>>
>>> Topics of the day:
>>>
>>>
>>> 1. Picturebooks about contemporary life in the UK
|
