La Cometa Vuela

I had a really fascinating conversation Monday with a producer from NAO-Kids in Mexico City about the state of public television and children’s television in Mexico. I will surely blog about that as I get up to speed on it, but it got me thinking about Latin American children’s media and children’s lit, and it hence reminded of a notice in the last SCBWI Bulletin (July-August 2008). Within the “News & Notes” column by editor-in-chief Stephen Mooser there’s an announcement of the creation of an online Spanish newsletter for, you guessed it, Spanish-language children’s literature. It’s called La cometa and it’s designed specifically for SCBWI members, though I don’t know if membership is mandatory to receive it. There is staff in both Spain and Mexico, meaning, I assume, equal emphases on Iberia and Latin America, hopefully within a single newsletter, though individual publications would not be bad. It has no website as yet (besides the SCBWI itself) but information can be gained from Sally Cutting at scbwi.spain@gmail.com for Spain or Judy Goldman at rabkey@alestra.net.mx for Mexico.

The journal’s sections include “Mercado,” “Eventos,” y “Convocatorias” (info on contests, etc.), making it primarily a resource for authors, but I think bilingual or Spanish-speaking parents would be interested as well, especially in the “Mercado.” My neighborhood in upper Manhattan is predominantly Dominican and the local library has extensive Spanish holdings in the children’s collections. I’ve never stopped to peruse them in depth, but whenever I walk past it seems like translations of English works, like Harold y el Lapiz de Color Morado or something. I applaud this and am about to post a longer entry about the virtues of translating picture books to make them available across language barriers, but at the same time there’s also something to be said about reading these works in their original language. As a filmmaker I don’t want the poor folks in Mexico or Mongolia or Manchester to have to watch American films all the time, and the same goes for kids’ books as well. What a fantastic resource La cometa will be if in addition to its author-oriented material it keeps parents abreast of the best new Spanish publications for kids.