Home | Business News | Browse by Publication | T | The Horn Book Magazine

Everywhere a children''s book: the view from Taiwan.

Article Excerpt
We can remember, not so many years ago, when the children's literature scene in Taiwan seemed as barren as Old Mother Hubbard's cupboard. But lately it's been just like Old MacDonald's farm, with here a book, there a book, everywhere a children's book, and all the buzz and hum you would expect to find on a largely middle-class, market-oriented island of some twenty million consumers. While the rest of the publishing industry has struggled during these last few years of deepening recession, the children's literature segment of the industry has flourished. Interest in children's literature has never been greater and is reflected not only in the cheerful ring of cash registers but in the proliferation of new publishers and providers, commercial and professional publications, book reviews, book clubs, and exhibitions of original picture-book art. One prominent sign of rising interest is the growing number of foreign writers and illustrators who have come here to be feted and fussed over like royalty. Another is the increasing number of children's publishers participating in the annual Taipei International Book Exhibition, reportedly the largest in Asia and fourth largest in the world. DK, Scholastic, and several other publishing giants now routinely reserve huge exhibition spaces at the event, and many others have substantial stalls. Small wonder, for the island has witnessed a boom in English-language imports over the last few years.

Outside the publishing world, advocacy groups, reading clubs, and workshops are sprouting up all over, from the Taipei chapter of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators to the do-it-yourself picture-book clubs introduced from Japan by Taiwanese illustrator Lucy Chen. We should also note the burgeoning academic interest in children's literature here. Many Taiwan colleges and universities now routinely offer courses in the subject; there is even a Graduate Institute of Children's Literature at the Taitung Teachers College, which also hosts at least one conference a year and edits a biannual children's literature journal.

Remarkably, all this is taking place in the absence of those two great dynamos of the North American children's market: school and library sales. For a country with one of the world's highest literacy rates, it is surprising how little literature actually makes it into public schools (apart from didactic excerpts from the classics and syrupy concoctions of contemporary poems, essays, and short stories extolling the joys of learning or the virtues of obedience and hard work). Elementary and junior-high school librarians and classroom teachers have virtually no budgets for children's books; even if they had, the curriculum leaves little room for children to read them. Like Japan, Taiwan has a fairly centralized educational system that relies almost entirely upon the use of textbooks and exercise manuals to teach language arts and a "teaching to examination" instructional model that compels all but the brightest school-age children to spend most of their waking hours during the school...