Award-Winning Global Literature in the U.S.

by Kathy G. Short

AwardBooksGlobal literature for children and adolescents has become increasingly available in the United States but is still a relatively small proportion of the number of books published each year. Recent statistics for 2013 from the Cooperative Children’s Book Center show the continuing decrease in the number of books depicting people of color from either the U.S. or the world, down to 7.3% of the total books received in 2013. The number of translated books published in the U.S. continues to be a very small percentage, 2-3%, of the total books for children published each year. The rise in global picture books is primarily coming from English-speaking countries, particularly the U.K. and Australia, as well as Western Europe. Educators thus need to carefully search out strong multicultural and global books because these titles can easily be overlooked and underrepresented in classrooms and libraries. This blog highlights several awards given to books in the U.S. that can support educators in their search for high quality global literature.

The Mildred L. Batchelder Award recognizes translated children’s and adolescent books, encouraging the translation and publication of international books in the United States. This award is given by the American Library Association to the publisher of a children’s book considered to be the most outstanding of those books originally published in a country other than the U.S. in a language other than English and subsequently translated and published in the U.S. An examination of the award-winners indicates that most are novels for readers in upper elementary through high school. Many are from Western Europe, although countries such as Japan, Norway and Sweden are also represented among the award winners and honor books.

USBBY, the U.S. national section of the International Board of Books for Young People, names an annual award list for books published or distributed in the U.S. that were originated or were first published in another country. The Outstanding International Books list thus contains books published in other English-speaking countries and then brought to the U.S. as well as translated books from other countries. USBBY began the award list hoping to draw the attention of educators to the award list and thus, hopefully, to increase the sales of these books. USBBY recognized that publishers were unlikely to publish more international literature without increased sales. When the list was first started, the majority of award books came from English-speaking countries but the list has become much more diverse over the years, reflecting a shift in publication and distribution. The list is divided into preschool-Grade 2, Grades 3-5, Grades 6-8, and Grades 9-12 and contains 35-40 books each year. The USBBY website has a bookmark for each annual list, an annotated bibliography, and a Google Map.

Finally, Notable Books for a Global Society is an annual list of both multicultural and global literature that promotes understandings of people and cultures throughout the world. The award is sponsored by the Children’s Literature and Reading Special Interest Group of the International Reading Association. This list of 25 books for K-12 consists of books set in the U.S. as well as around the world that are published or distributed in the U.S. This list is carefully selected to include a wider range of genres than in the other two awards, such as fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. As with the other awards, the lists of the award books are available on-line and so provide an easily accessible resource for educators searching out strong titles to reflect the diversity of our world.

All three awards recognize books that are published and/or distributed in the U.S. and, while that can be a limitation, these books are therefore much more easily accessible for educators in the U.S. who want to integrate more global literature into their classrooms, libraries, or teacher education programs. One source of tension is that many of these books are still not being published by U.S. companies but are distributed in the U.S. by publishers from Canada, such as Groundwood Books, or from New Zealand, such as Gecko Press. Although this trend is a positive one that increases the range of books available to readers, it also reveals a continued problem with global literature among U.S. publishers. Hopefully the successes of these international presses will have an impact on future publication decisions. Another issue is that folklore, fantasy, and historical fiction continue to dominate many of these awards with contemporary fiction being underrepresented, which can lead to children assuming certain global cultures either no longer exist or are set in the past. The good news, however, is that educators who are committed to encouraging global perspectives and intercultural understandings can find books that will make a difference in opening up the world for their students.

Please visit wowlit.org to browse or search our growing database of books, to read one of our two on-line journals, or to learn more about our mission.

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