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When we began to think about creating an online book group that would appeal to readers of all ages, there were classic titles that came quickly to mind. Finding books that corresponded to the PaperTigers’ goal of understanding different cultures through children’s literature was a challenge and an opportunity for exploring new reading adventures.

I was lucky. The first book I found on my initial foray into this new world of books that would appeal to both adults and children was one that immediately captured my heart and mind—Naming Maya by Uma Krishnaswami.

I’ve worked in bookstores for decades but this novel was one that I hadn’t encountered before. I was eager to hear other people’s opinions of it and to have the chance to talk about it, the way we readers always feel when we find a book that we love.

The comments for Naming Maya have been as rich and as thoughtful as I had hoped they would be. Readers have agreed that this is a book for mothers and daughters to read together, that it evokes India in a way that could describe Hyderabad as well as it does Chennai, and that the theme of dualism is expressed quite beautifully in the idea of the “Two-Gift.” As Maya herself concludes about trust, in an observation that applies to many things in this novel–and in life–”You keep some, you give some away.”

What makes this book one that I can return to with pleasure for reading over and over is, above all, the way that three very strong women of different generations are portrayed, Maya, Kamala Mami, and Maya’s mother. Together they make a household that is both temporary and enduring, and Uma Krishnaswami makes each of them enduring figures in the reader’s imagination. It is no small feat to be able to give life to characters of varying background and chronological age, but it is accomplished so well in Naming Maya.

Not only is Chennai vividly evoked in this book, but so is its culture and values. Uma Krishnaswami delicately and without editorializing shows through Maya’s eyes different ways of accepting marriage, of being a teenager, of growing old. And she so wonderfully shows how food can be a common language when living in a place where three different languages are routinely used and in all of them words sometimes fail.

“I hear you need a cook,” Kamala Mami announces to Maya and her mother, the day after their arrival in India. They do indeed, more than they know. Kamala Mami’s food brings them slowly together–right up until a dish made from her recipe crashes to the floor and releases Maya’s torrent of hitherto unspoken emotion.

The one complaint I have about this novel is that it hasn’t yet been released in a paperback edition, which would make it accessible to many more readers than it already is. When I recently told a fellow-bookseller about Naming Maya, his response was that far too few books address the subject of bi-cultural children, a point that both Aline and Katia touched upon in our discussion. Uma Krishnaswami has found a universality in belonging to two different worlds.  Through her art Maya’s duality becomes a new way for readers of all ages to look at their own lives, and that is an act accomplished by literature that is truly great.

If you haven’t yet read this book, I envy you the joy of experiencing it for the first time. If you know a young girl with whom you can share it, I envy you even more. If you’ve read it already, discover the joy of reading it again–and add your opinion to mine in the comments field if you agree that it should be reissued in a paperback edition, please!

A new list has hit the world of children’s literature–the Renaissance Learning Report on What Kids Are Reading. After gathering answers from more than 3 million students in U.S. schools, the report announces that first graders love Dr. Seuss, second graders are reading Laura Numeroff’s If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, E.B. White’s classic Charlotte’s Web is the third grade favorite, fourth graders flock to Judy Blume’s Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing and fifth grade’s number one choice is Katherine Paterson’s Bridge to Terabithia. Hatchet by Gary Paulsen is the most popular book among sixth graders.

Then the news becomes dismal. The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton is universally beloved by seventh and eighth grade readers and for that yawning chasm of ninth through twelfth grade, To Kill a Mockingbird wins hands down as most popular book for people ranging in age from fourteen to seventeen.

Please don’t get me wrong. These are two wonderful books and deservedly popular among every age group, from Generation Not Yet Born to the Baby Boomers. What bothers me immensely is that these two titles are quite evidently being widely read because they are on school reading lists, and that is the kiss of death for any book. There’s nothing like a good, stiff essay test to drain the life and enjoyment from any piece of literature.

Teachers and librarians deserve a hearty round of applause for rescuing students from the required reading of my youth, which was also the required reading for my mother in the days before World War Two. Silas Marner may well be a dazzling piece of English literature, but you’ll never get me to admit it–or, for that matter, my eighty-plus-year-old mother. Both of us, in our different generations, read it thoroughly enough to pass the following test with flying colors but neither of us would claim it as our best-loved book of that particular year.

This latest list does a great job of showing what is being assigned in classrooms across the country. What it doesn’t show is what “kids are reading,” especially when they hit adolescence, and this is something we all need to know, if only to enlarge our own reading horizons.

At the Tiger’s Bookshelf, we’ve asked questions about ways to make children readers. Perhaps one of the easiest ways is by finding out what they truly enjoy reading, picking it up for ourselves, and then talking with them about it, rather than making us talk to them about what we think they should be reading.

This may lead us into the graphic novel arena, or the world of fantasy and science fiction, or other literary roads that for some of us are less traveled. We could end up reading poems written for a poetry slam, or a zine or two. What is certain is that by asking questions and reading and discussing is going to lead us into more interesting territory than any list-making will.

What’s being read for pleasure by our children and why are those choices popular? When they go beyond the snack reading that every age group indulges in, what books do they turn to? What is being devoured, read again and again,and then passed on to friends?

I don’t know and I would certainly like to find out. Is there anyone out there with some answers?

When a man recently went to a bookstore in search of his book group’s latest selection, he never dreamed that a clerk would question who the book was for, nor did he expect an unsolicited analysis of his character. Yet that’s what happened to one purchaser of Aryn Kyle’s novel, The God of Animals, when the woman who waited on him asked who he was buying the book for, and when learning it was for the customer himself, informed him that men who read “women’s fiction” were “sensitive.”

The customer was understandably unsettled by this encounter, which he later discussed on National Public Radio’s program, The Bryant Park Project. As a bookseller for many years, and as a parent of two sons, I’m perplexed and unsettled by this story as well, on a couple of different levels.

Even if we ignore the fact that The God of Animals is an amazing novel about the modern-day American West, in which one of the central relationships is that between a father and daughter, and is a book that should never be limited to readers of only one gender, the assumption that there are “men’s books” and “women’s books” and never the twain shall meet is one that is alien to any bookstore I have ever known. Yet at the same time, as a children’s bookseller, I often heard, and have espoused myself, the point of view that “girls will read books about boys but boys will rarely read books about girls.”

There are of course exceptions–I’ve yet to find any child who will not devour Roald Dahl’s Matilda and Philip Pullman’s Golden Compass trilogy seems to have met few gender-based barriers. Yet I’ve learned from bitter experience that offering a boy Harriet the Spy or my all-time favorite Mistress Masham’s Repose often will evoke the disappointed response, “Oh, it’s about a girl.”

When my sons were small, they loved the adventures of Dorothy in the land of Oz and Alice whether she was in Wonderland or through the looking glass as much as they did Peter Pan or Rat, Mole and Toad in The Wind in the Willows. And certainly Marjorie’s Brothers One and Two seem to enjoy books about females as well as males.

So when and how does this divergence in taste occur? Or do we just assume that it will occur and turn it into a self-fulfilling prophesy? In your experience, do boys avoid books in which girls take the leading role? If so, how can we broaden that point of view? And what would have become of J.K Rowling if she had written about Harriet Potter?

Thursday, April 17, marks the observance of the very first National Poem in Your Pocket Day, when poetry lovers are urged to put a copy of their favorite poem in their pocket and read it aloud to willing listeners–and listen to them read their favorite poems in turn.

Originating in New York City, Put a Poem in Your Pocket Day has been celebrated city-wide in April since 2002, sending New Yorkers to parks and bookstores to read poems aloud, with even the mayor reading a poem over the radio. This year it’s a nation-wide festival, a day to celebrate the pleasures of poetry.

It’s an exciting thought that across the United States, schools, libraries, workplaces, coffee shops and sidewalks could be filled with the sounds of people reading poems aloud. Children may find poems tucked in their lunch bags, waitstaff in restaurants may be handed a poem as well as a tip, and sidewalk chalk could turn a public playground into a bouquet of poetry.

A store in my neighborhood is giving away copies of a favorite poem for customers to put in their pockets on Thursday, and I’m happily choosing which poem I will read to my favorite four-year-old. It’s not an easy choice, but it’s so much fun searching for the one that will be just right. I’m almost certain that it will be Ogden Nash’s The Tale of Custard the Dragon, which has delighted small children of my acquaintance for decades–as it still does me.

Next year I plan to have a poetry party on April 17, with food inspired by sonnets and sestinas, lots of reading aloud, and ending it with tying poems to the strings of balloons, sending them aloft, and setting them free. Come to think of it, I’m not sure I can wait a whole year before doing that–poetry potluck, anyone?

I gobbled Naming Maya when I first read it, swept up by its story, its characters and its sense of place. I’ve reread it several times since that first rapid perusal, and with each new reading I find another facet of the story.

There are so many things about this book that I long to discuss with other people who have read it too. It makes me wish I had a daughter so I could talk it over with her – and that leads me to believe that it’s a perfect selection for a mother-daughter book group. What do people who have daughters think? Is this a book that you would choose to read with girls in your family?

“Language can make you a stranger in many places, but only if you let it,” Maya observes in a place where Hindi, English, and Tamil all compete for her attention. How does Kamala Mami bring Maya’s family together in spite of their differing languages and customs?

Shared history and memory both are unifying and divisive in this novel. How does Kamala Mami’s chaotic flood of memories help Maya to live with her own?

In an earlier PaperTigers post, Filipino author Lara Saguisag discusses how different values and different dreams lead to varying forms of childhood. How do cultural values and the protection that they can offer contribute to the differences between Maya and her cousin?

And perhaps most of all – did other readers immediately go out in search of Indian food when they finished reading this book? I certainly did!

This year I gave my son a picture book for Christmas–nothing earthshaking about that until you consider that my son is in his early thirties and graduated from pictures to the printed word several decades ago. The book is one that my neighborhood bookstore has been selling to adults ever since it came to their shelves, and when I opened it I knew I had to give it to someone I loved. The book is Shaun Tan’s gorgeous book without words, The Arrival, and it is one that is featured on the Papertigers Gallery.

I have given picture books to adults for years, ever since I first began my life as a bookseller, and the illustrators that I yearn to give and to own are most often from Australia, a corner of the world that is covered quite wonderfully on Papertigers by Charlotte.

Just before I moved from the arena of children’s books to a life in SE Asia, a book came to me from Australia that has haunted my imagination ever since I opened it. It is a perfect example of how words and pictures magically combine to create a book that lives forever in the hearts and minds of readers–The Wolf by Margaret Barbalet, illustrated by Jane Tanner. No other book that I have found illustrates so vividly the crippling effects of fearing the unknown, and how facing that fear can turn it into something wonderful. Each picture is a painting, showing a family whose lives become imprisoned by their fear of the wolf who comes closer and closer to their house at night. When it is finally confronted by one of the children, it is revealed as a friendly, lonely creature who only wants shelter and love. Author and illustrator have blended their artistry to create a masterpiece that resonates to all age groups, on many different levels of understanding. If I could, I would give it to everyone I know.

And now–a plea for help–at the same time that The Wolf came into my life, another picture book from Australia also arrived in my workplace and I can no longer remember the title, author, or illustrator. The book however has proved to be unforgettable. It is the story of children playing an imaginary game in the backyard–the text shows the fantasy that the children have created while the full-page pictures show the reality of the game–the garbage can lids that are their shields and their dog who is the prey that they seek. It’s a brilliant depiction of the world of the imagination and I would love to find it again. Is there anybody out there who can steer me toward it?

Maya is one miserable New Jersey girl. Instead of spending the summer with her friend Joanie, she’s in India, the homeland of her parents, with her mother. Maya’s grandfather has died, her mother has inherited his house and is spending every waking moment trying to sell it, with little time left for Maya.

Every time I come to India, it’s like entering another world,” Maya complains, adding to a cousin, “I’m American here, but in America, I’m Indian.” Nobody understands, her mother is busy, and Kamala Mami, the housekeeper who is Maya’s constant companion, lapses frequently into her own strange and invisible world. Maya spends much of her time with her own thoughts, mourning the loss of her father, who moved far away after her mother divorced him.

As Kamala Mami becomes more and more immersed in memories of the past and less attached to the present, Maya leaves her own world of idealized memories to help the old woman whom she has learned to love. How can she bring Mami back to be with her? How can she break through the barrier of loss that separates her from her mother?

Please join us in reading and discussing this wonderful novel. Don’t like it? Tell us why–just don’t give away the ending!

I’d never before read anything by Nancy Farmer (although as a former children’s bookseller, of course I knew about her) until I picked up A Girl Named Disaster to read as the first Tiger’s Choice. I was lucky to have found it–this book is an outstanding piece of fiction that can be read and enjoyed by a doddering fifty-nine-year-old like me or by people who are substantially younger.

In an earlier posting by Corinne on PaperTigers, the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators in the Philippines pointed out that children’s literature from different cultures is shaped by differing values. This is made intriguingly clear by the story of Nhamo, the girl who leaves her tribe in search of her one living parent and a family that will be truly hers. Her quest is an adventure, and a solitary one, that takes her into a world populated only by animals. Unlike similar stories written with a differing cultural perspective (Julie of the Wolves, My Side of the Mountain, Island of the Blue Dolphins), this book does not show an anthropomorphic relationship between Nhamo and the baboons who are her neighbors. A lonely and frightened child, Nhamo forges a relationship with a world of the spirits rather than with the animal kingdom. She sustains herself through stories that she knows and loves about beings of an unseen realm, and in her dreams and in her waking imagination, these are the figures that guide her, and who allow her to bring out menacing, and hitherto unexplored, parts of herself by cloaking them under different names and the persona of spirits.

Her three-part story begins with elements of Cinderella, sweeps into a Robinson Crusoe-like world, and ends with a modern-day transformation and the fulfillment of a quest. At almost 300 pages, it is longer than many pieces of fiction for children, and it contains an impressive body of information within its compelling story. Anyone who reads it will be given a sense of place that only someone who has lived in that part of Africa could provide.

It could be a problematic choice to read aloud to a classroom of boys and girls. Although Nhamo’s adventures, and her adventuresome spirit, will appeal to both genders, the author’s frankness when writing about menstruation and other physical functions could be difficult in a mixed-gender classroom if read aloud. It is, however, a dazzling choice for a parent-child book group, or to give to a reluctant reader, or to enjoy as a solitary pleasure when in need of something absorbing and magical to read.

Before we move on to our discussion of A Girl Named Disaster and the introduction of the next Tiger’s Choice, we want to talk about the latest comments in the discussion of how to turn children into passionate readers.

Parents who read to their children are an essential element in creating readers, and Jeannine and Marjorie both bring up new ways for parents to ensure that this happens. Marjorie, whose sons’ book reviews light up the PaperTigers blog this week, suggests a virtual book group as being a way for children with irrepressible physical energy to come together in a space that doesn’t lend itself to exuberant (and distracting) physical activity. “After all,” she points out, “they are growing up with an affinity for virtuality which we can only wonder at!” Providing a way to link the world of books with the virtual world seems to be a brilliant way to keep reading alive in the brave new world of the internet. If anybody else has ideas on blending these two disparate pastimes, please let us know.

Jeannine, who read three to four books a night with her son when he was small, says that talking about the books was as much fun as reading them. She observes that parents can encourage their children to be engaged readers who can eventually take part in intelligent book discussions by through questions (”Why do you think he did that?”) and through connecting real-life activities with books shared with children. “If you’re reading about a garden, go outside and dig in the dirt,” she urges. And she adds, in the same spirit as Corinne, “As for the TV–just say no!”

Suggestions that add to this conversation, previously posted to the CCBC-net listserv, (the Cooperative Children’s Book Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Education), are reprinted here with permission. Megan Schliesman, CCBC Librarian, says, “When my husband, daughter and I gather together for a shared story (we are currently on book 3 of Suzanne Collin’s “Gregor the Overlander series), I am aware–as several have already mentioned–that we are not only experiencing a terrific story, we are also making shared memories.”

Lee Bennett Hopkins, a well-known poet and anthologist, echoes another poet, Sherman Alexie, in advocating The Snowy Day. “Read aloud The Snowy Day by [Ezra Jack] Keats; follow it up with “Cynthia in the Snow” where snow is “Still white as milk or shirts/So beautiful it hurts.” in Gwendolyn Brooks’ Bronzeville Boys and Girls….With every book you read aloud, find a poem to go with it. I believe we spend too much time TEACHING children to READ–and NOT enough time TEACHING them to LOVE to read. GET the difference.”

Let’s celebrate that difference and continue the discussion on how to make it become a vital part of the lives of children.

By Christine Mix