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 Over the weekend I recieved a big box of books! "Give Up, Gecko!" is a picturebook I illustrated last year for Amazon Picture Books. The author is the prolific Margaret Read MacDonald, who has written over 60 books.

Today’s post has been the hardest post to research since I began this blog. Why? Well, as part of Reading Round Europe I’ve been searching and searching for almost 6 months (yes, half a year – that’s how dedicated I am!) for some fantastic Danish picture books available in English translation to bring to you, to share with my girls and for us all to enjoy. But have I been able to find any?

Barely. I’ve found one or two Danish picture books that were nice enough, but not so brilliant, and I’ve seen references to one or two on the internet which I then haven’t been able to get hold of to read, let alone review. What’s going on with Danish children’s literature? Why are so few Danish picture books translated into English?

Nina Christensen, Associate professor at the Centre for Children’s Literature (Center for Børnelitteratur) wrote to me:

“I think one explanation could be different views on childhood and of the role of the adult in relation to children’s books.

You might find it a provocative statement, but when I enter a children’s book shop in England – or Sweden for that matter – I find that a majority of books are made in a way so that neither child nor parent/adult is challenged too much. Generally speaking picture books seem to confirm existing norms and conventions.

A lot of Danish picture books are also like that. But I think there is also a tendency in picture books from Denmark (and Norway), to expand the borders of how you can address also small children and which kind of stories you can tell them. Today, I am working on a presentation of some recently published Danish picture books: One of them is about children in a concentration camp (illustrations by Dorte Karrebæk), one of them about a girl in a third world country who lives in a dumping ground, and in a new humoristic and ironic version of H.C. Andersen’s “What the Old Man Does is Always Right” the main character, Osama, meets three prostitutes, a drug dealer and a homeless character.

Very simply put: In some Danish (and Norwegian) picture books (older) children are exposed to i.e. cruelty towards children, naked children, sex, less than ideal behavior presented in an ironic manner etc. In relation to these examples, the child reader is supposed to be “competent” – not an individual who should always be protected from strong or strange impressions. I think this could be one of reasons why so few of them are translated. I might be wrong.”

I’d love to be able to research this thesis. Certainly it seems to be a plausible hypothesis if you also look at an article in IBBY’s Bookbird journal, “A Challenge to Innocence – ‘Inappropriate’ Picturebooks for Young Readers” by Carol Scott (2005, Vol 43, no. 1 – available to read for free in pdf form here)

Photo: Mads Boedker

4 Comments on This post has taken me 6 months to write…, last added: 5/9/2011