Iran Childrens Book Text

Iran’s First International Children's Book Festival took place in Kerman and Bam, Iran, March 8-15th, 2005. Writers, illustrators, teachers, librarians, children’s televison programmers, literary translators, film makers, critics, and publishers gathered in Kerman for a week long celebration which featured lectures, panel discussions, and book browsing.

The first image following the book festival poster is of Hossein Ebrahimi (Elvand), founder and award-winning translator, House of Translation For Children and Young Adults in Tehran. Elvand critiqued my forthcoming young adult novel, Anahita’s Woven Riddle, set in 19th century Persia, and invited me to Iran. He greeted me with a bouquet of roses in the dark wee hours of the morning on February 28 at the Tehran airport along with his colleague Pirouz Ghasemi. Soon after, I met two more translators from the House of Translation, Jaleh Novini and Reza Najafi, who appear together in the photo following Elavand’s. Three other children’s book authors attended the festival. Seated from the left in the third photo is Jamila Gavin (UK) and Donna Jo Napoli (USA). The next photo is of Sonia Nimr (Palestine) and me.
In Tehran we visited Kanoon, an Institute For Intellectual and Cultural Development for Children and Young Adults. This is a publically sponsored arts center, one of four hundred in the country in which children may explore visual arts, animation, film making, puppetry, book illustration, pottery, song, music, handiworks and more. Iranian film maker, Moshen Makhmalbaf, whose recent movies Gabbeh and Kandahar have shown in the U.S., is said to have gotten his start in one of these institutes.
In this quiet city of roughly 17 million, which in many respects looks like Salt Lake City, Utah, with its nearby snow capped mountains, we were interviewed by college students who were interested in discussing our work, the bi-centennial celebration of Hans Christian Anderson’s birth, and the place of myth and fairytales in contemporary children’s literature. Also in Tehran, our hosts treated us to visits to the blown glass, archaeological, and carpet museums.
Next we were joined by Katharina Varzi and Javad Javini, two more writers and translators from the House of Translation, and Mehdi Hedjvani, writer, critic, and Secretary of the Association for Writers of Children and Youth. We all flew to Isfahan where we toured Masjid-I Imam mosque and two ancient bridges. One is called Thirty-Three Bridges, I believe, for it’s thirty three arches. Here, people gather to listen to men of all ages sing songs in the evenings. I was told they sang love songs and laments. Their unaccompanied solos reminded me of Irish traditional sean nos singing in the West of Ireland. Beneath these bridges is also where people come to smoke hookahs in cozy carpeted rooms. Since Isfahan was Javad Javini’s hometown, he was in charge of our agenda, which included talking the muezzin at the mosque into allowing us to climb up a centuries-old minaret. It would have been a breeze had we not climbed it in pitch darkness, up steps that were mostly half missing or long crumbled away. But what views from the top!
Our pre-book-festival tour took us next to Bam, the site of an ancient sand citadel that had been severely damaged in an earthquake in 2003, which killed nearly 30,000 people. Below, I have provided a link from this page to a separate web page for more information on Bam and women’s relief projects. Shown in this slide show are two photos taken in Bam–one of women wearing black chadors who are painting posters for the book festival that would be held in Bam, and another of the warehouse constructed for exhibitors’ booths. Publishers gave away 10,000 books to local schools and libraries, and to the children who attended, and 40,000 books to the province at large. During this festival they inaugurated the first children’s library in Kerman Province.
Most of the festival took place in the city of Kerman, about two hours north of Bam. Banners depicting books, children, and elephants flew in the roundabout near the government building which hosted the children’s book conference in the city of Kerman. Balloons lined the sidewalks along with teachers and droves of students. Families by the thousands strolled among the acre-wide square that brimmed with books from 110 publishers. The photos shown here taken at night in the book pavilion include one of Kaveh Mostashari (left), our tireless, flawless, and quite humorous translator, speaking with the publisher who published visiting author Donna Jo Napoli’s book Beast in Farsi.
At the festival I had the pleasure of meeting one of Iran’s favorite authors Moradi Kermani. His work has won awards in Iran and Europe and several of his stories have appeared in Cricket magazine. I have included a picture of him standing beside Elvand. The creativity that went into the stage design for the festival was astonishing. A painted canvas that depicted the ancient citadel and village in Bam served as backdrop. The speakers’ podium was made of blown glass and so were the fountains, building blocks and animal sculptures that decorated the stage floor.
Except for the impressive showing of men who attended this conference – at least half – I found that the landscape of children’s literature in Iran shared much in common with that of ours at home. Speakers voiced concerns that reading was taking second place to television, video games and the Internet. They examined tough social problems such as sexual relationships, marriage, divorce, and child abuse and how these topics should be dealt with in children’s literature. They spoke about the necessity of reading, particularly translations of foreign literature in order to reach out to the world. I was told that at least 20% of the books for children published in Iran are foreign translations. In the adult book market at least 10x as many foreign novels are translated and published than novels from Iranian novelists. For the sake of comparison, in the United States, only about 3% of books published are foreign translations. It would seem that Iranians are exposed to more worldly perspectives than what the media here at home would have us believe–especially with the frequent use of the word "repressive" attached to any news headlines about Iran. The imaginative, inquisitive, and expressive people I met in Iran painted quite another picture.
In the last photo of this collection I am sitting with three women writers and translators from the House of Translation. From left to right is Shida Ranjbar, me, Parvin Jelvehnejad, and Shaghayegh Ghanhari. I enjoyed getting to know these women and many others. Please check my website from time to time as I hope to feature work from these women and other Iranian writers.
Thank you for your interest!
For more images of Iran and its people, and for other discoveries and reflections about my trip, please click on:
Bam Earthquake/Ancient Silk Road Citadel/Women’s Relief Projects and Landscape, Architecture, and People of Iran (coming soon)
Click Here to read my related article in The Spokesman Review.
Links to the other international authors who visited Iran with me:
www.donnajonapoli.com
www.jamilagavin.co.uk