International Companion Encyclopedia of Children’s Literature

Fuglesang 1982:199–200

There is no question that the illustration and design of children’s books in developing
countries present challenges, but an even greater one is the language used in children’s
literature. There are still quite a number of cultures in which the everyday speech of
people, even fairly educated persons, is very different from the generally accepted written
forms of the language. Most notable in this category is Arabic, spoken by nearly 200
million people. Kaye and Zoubir find that

Classical Arabic, in its written form, is of an almost hallucinatory imprecision.

Hence its difference from many other classical languages, and hence also the fact

that, unlike other written languages of power, it has not altered the basically oral

quality of cultures where it has a privileged place. It needs to be read aloud but all

such readings can only ever be variations on the many-layered textual possibilities.

In addition, Arabic calligraphy is quite unlike the rectangular uniformities of print.

It is, therefore, aurally and visually variable.

Kaye and Zoubir 1990:21

Many writers for children are well aware of the fact that their young readers understand
only a small percentage of texts written in classical Arabic, yet they hesitate to write in
colloquial style. Their hesitations come partly from fear of being accused of downgrading
the importance of classical Arabic, of denigrating the language of the Koran, of helping
to cause the disappearance of the great classical Arabic traditions. But lack of model
children’s books, written in good but colloquial Arabic, is also a factor.
Many children learn by rote the verses of the Koran in classical Arabic, even though in
their homes they speak an Arabic dialect or another language altogether. This linking of
language with sacred texts sometimes creates what Jack Goody (1968) calls ‘religious
literacy’. In his view, in societies where children first become literate in this manner,
general reading of secular literature is often restricted or discouraged. Such children
have very different expectations of books and other printed matter.
Another factor that has created difficulties for many writers is orthography. So many of
the world’s languages were written down in orthographies that were only partially
successful. Ngugi wa Thiong’o has made a conscious decision to write only in Gikuyu,
his mother tongue. He believes that writers should compose in their home languages
rather than in one inherited from colonial times. But when he began writing in Gikuyo,
he encountered a problem. ‘The distinction between the short and the long vowel is very
important in Gikuyu prose and poetry. But the prevailing orthography often left the
reader to guess whether to prolong or shorten the vowel sound’ (Ngugi 1986:11).
Recently, the Peruvian section of the International Board on Books for Young People
(IBBY) decided to publish a series of of bilingual picture books. When it came to
producing a picture book in Spanish and Quechua, it was found that no single
rendering could, in all likelihood, be read or understood by all Quechua-speaking
children. The orthography, the vocabulary, and the mode of expression are so different
for the different branches of Quechua speakers in Peru, that the picture book was
printed in four different versions.

664 THE WORLD OF CHILDREN’S LITERATURE