Need a Children's Book in Serbian or Slovak? Martin Greenwald Can Help
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Joan Oleck -- School Library Journal, 12/5/2007 2:15:00 PM
You've undoubtedly heard of George Soros, the billionaire philanthropist, but you may not know that he's supporting the publishing and distribution of children's books across four continents. In 1994 Soros's Open Society Institute—which promotes democratic governance and economic and legal reform—conceived the Step by Step early education program. Five years later, the Institute established the International Step by Step Association (ISSA), as an umbrella organization to distribute books in 33 countries. In 2003, The Reading Corner began offering downloadable books to educators abroad connected with Step by Step organizations. The latest wrinkle? Foreign-language books for children of expatriates in the U.S.—plus a foray into publishing Arabic books in Israel. SLJ spoke with Director of Publishing Martin Greenwald about these efforts to put books into the hands of children worldwide.
You’re publishing books across the globe for children ages two to eight. Volunteer editors select manuscripts, paid professionals edit them, and member countries translate them. In how many languages and countries are your books offered?
Thirty languages and 33 countries.The original intent was for preschool kids because there was just a total lack of books outside of fairy tales in most of these countries. Even if the books existed, they couldn’t afford them.
What do your books have in common?
The common feature is that they deal with problems that a child would encounter: everything from moving your home, to the first day of class, to having a new brother or sister, to being discriminated against because you’re different. The intent was for these books to be available to the various Step by Step programs, for [teachers] to download from the site.
How does that work?
The way it’s set up on the site is that the art is in one file, the language text is in another. [Teachers] just have to download the two files; and you can actually produce the books on a copy machine or print them as a traditional print book. As long as [educational personnel are] from one of our nation chapters [there is no chapter in the U.S.], they download for free; the only cost is paper and ink. A number of the countries have [taken it] further, by printing books not only in their own languages but in two or three [other] languages. In Hungary, the books are done in Hungarian and Roma—that kind of thing. Other places, it’s the local language and English, where they’re using it for teaching a language.
What is the cost to schools?
They pay a minimal fee for the right to do that. Then they sell [the books] through their schools, for fund-raisers, or through arrangements with local publishers to distribute the books more broadly. So it’s turned out to have multiple purposes, depending on the program and the entity.
Can kids take the books home?
If they’re downloads, what [teachers] tend to do is put the books into sleeves; that’s a choice made locally by every school. We don’t in any way tell them how they can do it. I’ve seen one situation where they’ve downloaded books in black and white and used them as coloring books. It's up to the imagination of the teacher as to how they’re used.
Have there been any surprises so far?
I was shocked that Moldova, a very small country, has already sold or printed and distributed 17,000 books—over the period of two years. That’s a huge number of books! Population-wise, that may be the highest number.
Tell me about the books' production.
All of our authors and illustrators are from the region. They write the books in their local languages, they’re translated [into English] by local operations, and then come here for consideration; we have an international advisory board, of which there are two New York publishers [Simon & Schuster and Harry Abrams] represented on the advisory board. Those are pro bono. All the work is done before it’s presented to the board. Then the books go on to our Web site, which has a function [allowing translations of] the books. Each of our local countries has the responsibility of translating each book into their language, and it gets posted up on the Web site. So if I am in the Czech Republic and want to do this in Russian, it’s accessible to me.
What about the United States?
Starting in 2006, [technology] had the ability for the first time to produce these full-color books by print on demand; and that gave us a whole new market. There are these huge expatriate communities in America. They want to keep their language and their culture alive. Why not try to sell to them? They’re available in English, but we don’t want to compete against Random House and Simon & Schuster. We selected 12 languages that have the largest ex-pat communities; and these are the books that we’re now in the process of publishing. We have15 titles that we started with in 12 languages—180 books. All the money made from these books goes back into the schools and the programs.
Which languages are available in the U.S.?
Albanian, Armenian, Czech, French (from the progam in Haiti), Hungarian, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Spanish (from the program in Argentina), Ukrainian, and English. We'll be adding Arab books, too.
What’s the easiest way to order your books here in the U.S.?
You can go right on to Amazon; every one appears on Amazon; you can go onto Follett Library Service; they have all the books. So does Baker & Taylor. Then there are specialized Web sites selling the books. They are on the expensive side; they go from $12.95 to $16.95.
