Today you are in for a treat. Julie Danielson, author of the Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast blog, is here to chat with me about international books. Before we start, I should say that I could have included about thirty links to her excellent blog but was too lazy. Please, pour yourself a cup of coffee, carve out a day or two, and go over there. It's an amazing resource for anyone who loves illustration and wants to read more. She has a dandy search function, but I warn you, you will never want to leave. So visit her blog that AFTER you read this, okay?

Robin: Jules, off the top of your head, what are some of your favorite titles from other countries? I have a mini-stack, but, now that I am no longer on the Oustanding International Book committee at USBBY, I don’t get books from other countries unless our local bookstore happens to carry them. I know you see some great ones.

Julie: I really love Benji Davies’s The Storm Whale, which was first published last year in the UK but came to the United States this year by way of Henry Holt. It’s a genuinely sweet story of friendship and family, and I love the moments of understated humor.

Marianne Dubuc’s The Lion and the Bird was first published in French last year and was translated into English this year, thanks to Enchanted Lion Books. It’s gently paced — a picture book that really knows when to slow down and breathe. When I wrote about it at my site, I said that I remember reading once in a theater text in college that a play is interrupted silence. Well, this story is interrupted silence. Dubuc never rushes the story and really invites readers to be a part of the main character’s loneliness (and subsequent joy).

I love Lena and Olof Landström's Pom and Pim, originally published in 2012. They are from Sweden, and their books usually come to American readers by way of Gecko Press. The Swedes seem to be so good at telling wonderfully droll stories that are all about the types of daily dramas (and traumas) that very young children really care about. (Barbro Lindgren is really good at this, too.) And I love the sly humor and minimal lines in the illustrations in Pom and Pim.

Speaking of Gecko, I also like Komako Sakai’s Hannah’s Night, first published in Japan in 2012. It’s the story of a very young girl who wakes at night and explores her home with her cat, Shiro. There’s mystery and wonder and mischief, and the youngest of readers will thrill at Hannah’s free reign of the home. There are moments of beauty, too, and Sakai’s thick brushstrokes create this vibrant texture in her artwork. There are deep, rich blues, made all the more striking when the sun comes up on Hannah. Ah. Komako Sakai. I’m a fan.

I could go on, but those are probably my top favorites. I know you’ve seen The Storm Whale and Pom and Pim, yes?

Robin: Yes, and I am nuts about both of those titles. The Storm Whale has the story line that I love in a picture book, and Pom and Pim has the slyness and simple illustrations that tell the whole story.

Julie: I should also mention that it’s fascinating to see picture book releases from Tara Books, which is based in Chennai, South India. Hope Is a Girl Selling Fruit is the picture book debut of artist Amrita Das, who paints in the Mithila tradition of folk art, a style of Indian painting practiced in the eastern region of India. I also wrote about that this year and how Das’s prose is direct and moving (and the translation from the Hindi original is seamless). The highly stylized illustrations are marvels of symmetry and reflect grand traditions of Indian art, yet also retain subtle shades of originality.

Robin: I got to serve on the OIBC committee for two years and I loved being introduced to Tara Books. (They have entered into the stationery business, which is a dangerous thing for me. I can't stop buying their cards.) Are there other publishers who are bringing international books to an American audience?

Julie: I also love it when U.S. publishers will take on imports. Or at least illustrators who live elsewhere. Chronicle will. Candlewick will, in large part because they are with Walker Books in the UK. Schwartz & Wade did Deep in the Sahara. (The author is American, but I'd love to see more work from that illustrator.) TOON Books will (Liniers, for instance). I'm sure there are more. And, of course, Enchanted Lion, but they're all about that. I don't know how Claudia Bedrick does it all so well. She's a wonder.

Robin: What are some of the ways books from other countries differ from books published in the States by American authors?

Julie: I think that, generally speaking, Americans seem to be — for whatever reason — wary of open-ended picture books. This seems to be changing, given the success of picture book creators like Jon Klassen and Mac Barnett. (You can’t get any more open-ended than the final spread in Sam and Dave Dig a Hole.) But Europeans, in particular, seem to have been more comfortable with open-endedness for longer. I still remember a conversation Roger started back in 2012 where a discussion about this occurred in the comments. (To quote illustrator Sergio Ruzzier: “Please, let us have a little bit of uncertainty here and there; otherwise life can get pretty boring.”)

Also, I interviewed Stian Hole at 7-Imp this year. He is from Norway, and this year Eerdman’s released his Anna’s Heaven. Stian and I discussed open endings in our chat. “Life isn´t always a safe place, so why should it be in picture books?” he said. “Wouldn't it be a fraud to tell children that life is always sweet?” But he also said:

"One difference I have noticed across the Atlantic sea…is that for some reason I don't quite understand, there is sometimes — or rather in some places in the U.S. — a reluctance toward skin, nakedness, and sexuality in children's and young adult books. The U.S. is the only country that has asked me to put more clothes on the characters in my images or else they will not publish them. I once had to remove a boy that was peeing, for some reason. Not even the Arabic countries asked me to do that." He goes on to say he loves his U.S. publisher for taking on his “weird books,” but this is something that generally baffles him.

Robin: Are there illustrators that you look for each year? If so, which ones?

Julie: Isabelle Arsenault, Komako Sakai, Serge Bloch, Beatrice Rodriguez, Suzy Lee, Benjamin Chaud, Liniers, Rafael López (who, at least when I interviewed him at 7-Imp in 2011, had a home in both Mexico and the U.S.), Meilo So, Marije and Ronald Tolman, Dorothée de Monfreid, Wolf Erlbruch, Birgitta Sif. Then there are the talented Brits: Emily Gravett, Mini Grey, Helen Oxbenbury. John Burningham is one of my top-five favorite illustrators. And Gita Wolf is a writer, not an illustrator, but I try my best to follow her illustrated books. (She also founded Tara Books in India – back in the 1990s.)

Robin: I didn't know Gita Wolf was an author. Wow. Is there a country that seems to support illustrators more than other countries?

Julie: That’s a tough question. I think that Australia, especially thanks to Walker Books Australia, does a good job of getting the word out about their illustrators. Think: Bob Graham, Shaun Tan (although I know Scholastic publishes him here in the States). I also love the work of someone named Ann James, who illustrated Sonya Hartnett’s Sadie and Ratz back in 2012, which Candlewick released here in the U.S. (Just look at those charcoal drawings. Exquisite.)

The Bologna Ragazzi Awards have a category, called New Horizons, that gives special recognition to Arab, Latin American, Asian, and African countries. I love this, because I feel like here in the States we see a fair amount of Asian imports, but I’d like to see more Arab, Latin American, and African picture books.

Robin, finally: What is the main thing you learned from being on the Bologna Ragazzi Award jury?

Julie: In Bologna, you are judging illustrations and, to some extent, design. I love that there are awards out there, like that one, that honor illustration alone, regardless of the text. It’s good to have art awards like that, and boy howdy was I happy to see picture books from all over the world. However, I left with an even deeper appreciation of our Caldecott award, which really looks at the picture book as an art form in which text and art play together. It is a unique art form, after all, and it’s pretty great that the Caldecott celebrates it.