Today we catch up with Patricia Aldana, Publisher of Aldana Libros, an imprint of Greystone Books in Vancouver, Canada which focuses on picture books for all ages in translation. WKL contributor Mia Spangenberg leads the conversation.

WKL: Hello Patricia and welcome back to the WorldKidLit blog! Aldana Libros is a relatively new imprint of Greystone Books. Could you tell us about what led to the formation of this imprint? How does your mission inform the books you aim to publish?

When I was publisher at Groundwood Books, which I founded, I realized that children in the English-speaking world had access to fewer and fewer books from the rest of the world than they had in the classic heyday of American children’s publishing. As an immigrant from Guatemala, I found this very unfortunate.  So, from early days I began commissioning and buying books from other cultures and places—most of which required translation. After I left Groundwood in 2012, I was approached by the largest Chinese children’s publisher, CCPPG, to bring books from around the world to Chinese children.  As was the case in the US and the UK, the very best international books simply weren’t being published in China.  At that time the visionary publisher of CCPPG, Li Xuechian, wanted to open the world to Chinese kids. My contract was for five years. Tragically today China is no longer anywhere near as interested in opening to the world.

I then had the very good fortune to be asked by Rob Sanders of Greystone Books to create a list for English children of a similar nature, i.e. to bring the very best books from all kinds of countries and cultures and publish them for children in English. The large British and American houses have to a great extent stopped being interested in buying these kinds of books.  There are excellent small US houses now publishing translations – but in terms of the mass of books available to children who speak English, we publishers of translation are all together but a drop in the bucket.

WKL: How many books do you publish per year?

Aldana Libros publishes four titles a year.

WKL: You mentioned that China and the big English language houses seem to have lost their interest in international books – what do you think is driving this change?

With respect to China I believe that the decision to be more closed is a direct result of the political changes that have taken place over the past decade. Many of the senior people who brought me in were survivors of the Cultural Revolution.  When it ended there was a lot of space for very gifted people to rise, at least in the cultural world that I knew something about, which really was a meritocracy.  Now I think such jobs have fallen much more to people from the Party and those who have well connected families. I’m not a political scientist and don’t want to say much more than that.  But I do think it’s tragic for the young editors and rights people I worked with in China who were so excited about the opening process.

As for the English-speaking world, I believe this is a direct consequence of the concentration of publishing into a few mega-companies primarily driven by profit, not to say that there aren’t excellent editors in those companies who are still making great books. But sales and marketing people have a very big say in what is publishable to the detriment of translated books.

Of course, the smaller US houses are still bringing in books from many places.

But the fact that so few of the major houses are sending children’s editors to Bologna and Frankfurt, much less the Guadalajara Book Fair, really affects their access to books from around the world.  It’s so different from the days when I started in publishing in the late 70s and 80s when people like Margaret McElderry, Dorothy Briley, Norma Jean Sawicki, Julia McRae, Stephen Roxborough, etc. were such a force.  They would never have missed a Bologna Book Fair.

WKL: Given the dearth of international children’s titles making their way into English, what can be done to help?

Librarians, school librarians, and booksellers are essential in bringing very good books of all different kinds to children.  We need to ensure that they see translated books, review them and promote them.  Aldana Libros and Groundwood, where I was before, have managed to make these books visible with their support, despite our small budgets.  Librarians are the heroines/heroes of the world of good books.

WKL: Your list focuses on translated titles. How do you find these books, and what role do they play in your overall publishing goals?

I only publish books in translation. I have had the very good fortune as former president of IBBY (the International Board on Books for Young People) to travel widely and to get to know authors and publishers in many countries that few other publishers have had a chance to visit. Thus, I have found books in all kinds of places through meeting authors and publishers who might never get to the international book fairs.  Also, as a Latin American I have extensive ties in the Spanish-speaking world. Of course, with the large number of people in the US who are Spanish speakers or descendants of Latino immigrants, I have also been lucky enough to contribute to these children’s knowledge of their own heritage and language. Aldana Libros originates a number of books from Latin American authors and illustrators.  Whenever possible we publish them in both languages.

WKL: It’s interesting that you mention having had the opportunity to get to know authors and publishers outside of book fairs, which is often where English language publishers do find international titles. Other small publishers and translators would also like to make these kinds of fruitful connections, but are far from publishing centers like New York and London and not able to easily travel to book fairs. Can you offer any networking advice?

They can join USBBY, become a member of REFORMA, or go to ALA midsummer. They can contact the agents of international publishers and ask to be on their mailing lists. But even one trip to Bologna would be worth doing just to find other publishers around the world that they feel excited by.  Buying and selling rights is very much a person-to-person activity between like-minded people. Once they make the right connections, they can get catalogues and newsletters from people that have compatible publishing programs.

WKL: Picture books in other languages can often have more text than we are used to in English-language markets. Other cultures can also have a different aesthetic or a different sense of the kinds of topics that are appropriate for children’s books. Have you encountered challenges like this with your children’s books in translation? How do you handle these challenges during the editing process?

I have not found that there are many more words in the books I have bought for the English-speaking market.  However, of course it is important that the books we publish have the very best text in English for our market.  As the years have gone by, and as we encounter more and more censorship of books from the right but also from some people’s anxiety and sometimes discomfort with other ways of looking at the world, I try to focus on what I think is important:

1.  Staying true to the original culture of the book.  As I said once at a seminar in China that was along the same line as this question—“We want children to know the world as it is, not the way we think it should be.”
2. Challenging what is and what isn’t appropriate.  For me it is possible to accommodate other realities without doing any damage to children.  What is damaging is to grow up thinking everyone is just like you, and that if they aren’t they are “bad.”
3. Making sure the English translation, while considering the views above, is as good as it can be.
4. Sometimes, we add a note to the book explaining what the context of the story might be, where it comes from, how it is told.

WKL: Thank you for sharing this gorgeous example. Could you tell us about some forthcoming titles you are looking forward to?

I’m very excited about our two fall 2023 books, each of which is the creation of a Hans Christian Andersen Award winner. The Shade Tree, written and illustrated by Suzy Lee with Helen Mixter, is the 2022 winner. She is quite well known in the US. But this book first appeared as a leporello (a folding book), a format that is very difficult in the North American market. We worked hard with Suzy Lee to make sure the transition to a normal book was acceptable to her and still as beautiful as the original. 

We also have a book illustrated by the astounding 2018 Han Christian Andersen Award winner, Igor Oleynikov.  He is much less well-known in the English world because he often illustrates very dark retellings of the great Russian authors that are much more suited to adult graphic novels and their publishers. They should look at what he does! Igor has tended to work on texts from Chinese books that just aren’t as strong as they need to be. I had been looking and looking for a book of his that would tell a comprehensible story in a powerful way and I finally found it in Where Can We Go? by Dai Yun, with a rough translation adapted by Helen Mixter.  It’s about a bear family that cannot survive because the seals they eat have disappeared and how they handle this situation. It’s very funny but also sad. It can be used to talk about climate change, refugees, the importance of having access to books and other media to find solutions—and also, whether that media actually can solve your problems. It’s just a wonderful book with extraordinary art from an illustrator almost completely unknown in the English market.

WKL: Our readers include translators as well as teachers, librarians, booksellers, and others. What’s the best way to find your books? What can we do to support you and your efforts?

You can find our books everywhere books can be found, both online and in person, though we always encourage readers to visit their local, independent bookstore and local library to browse our books. You can find Aldana Libros and support us on our website and at @greystonekidsbooks on Instagram. Also, you can sign up for our newsletter for fun updates about future and existing books, as well as access additional resources like teacher’s guides, author interviews, and more.

Patricia Aldana is a children’s book publisher based in Canada. She is the founder and former publisher of Groundwood Books, past president of the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY), current president of the IBBY Trust, and current publisher of Aldana Libros, an imprint of Greystone Kids