| A while back I had a call from a member of the Madrid Writers' Critique Group who I hadn't seen for several months. Since the membership of the group is erratic to say the least - a core group of a dozen and a mailing list of nearer a hundred - I wasn't surprised that Lucía and I hadn't coincided for a while, but was delighted that she'd remembered me, particularly when she explained the reason for her call.
She told me she was setting up an independent publishing house and wanted someone to do the English translations of the first set of books - the Manu series - three board picture books aimed at children under three. Although "Manu se va a la cama" is not a major literary translation, I leapt at the chance.
You may wonder why a new editorial was needed to deal with the project - aren't there enough publishing houses already, bringing out thousands of kids' books each year? If the Manu series deserved to be published, wouldn't one of them take the manuscripts?
Well, perhaps not. Topka books are aimed at covering the needs of a readership which currently has few titles available.
Manu, for example, the naughty, but affectionate, hero of the eponymous series, lives with Mama and Mommy, his two mothers. Maite, the protagonist of The Many-Coloured Love - a storybook from the T-Tales Collection aimed at slightly older readers - also has two mothers, whereas Ana-Lin (The Crystal Egg) is a Chinese child who lives with her adoptive mother in Madrid. And Lucy - the redoubtable heroine of Lucy: Loud and Clear - is determined to overcome her deafness and get her point across to her thoughtless, hearing, older brother.
Adopted children, the children of homosexual parents, children with physical disabilities... they all find their place in Topka. And the books are perfect for multilingual families as they are written as parallel texts in Spanish and English. (The Many-Coloured Love is also available in a French-English version.)
One thing that is clear about Topka philosophy is that the "difference", whatever it might be, is not a stumbling block. It's also not usually the focus of the story. Ana-Lin is just another little girl who to visit her cousins at the seaside; Manu gets up to the tricks that any little boy does, and the fact that Mommy and Mama are there to give him a hug and a kiss is just the way things are.
But clearly these are not books that will find an easy welcome among mainstream publishers. There are kids' books on the market with characters with "token" differences. But these children are seldom the main character, and when they are, the difference is all too often the focus of the story, the trigger of conflict. In Topka, as in the real world, the differences just are.
It's great that children from minority groups should see themselves reflected in the Topka books, but it's a pity if the books are dismissed as a gimmick and not included alongside "normal" imprints on the bookshop shelves. Children are not naturally judgmental, and seeing differences dealt with naturally in their books is a wonderful way of introducing them to other lifestyles.
If your local bookshop isn't stocking the Topka books yet, you can buy them on-line at www.topka.es. If you're a budding writer with an idea for a story you think might suit the Topka philosophy, you'll find full guidelines on the website, too. And if you're coming to Madrid and want to drop in on the writers' group, we meet every Tuesday evening. More information about the group from madridwriters@patchword.com |
