Children's Literature in Mongolia

I’m pleased to return, at least in an ad hoc form, to my erstwhile series on Asian children’s literature. I know very little about the state of literature in Mongolia, but thanks to the November/December SCBWI Bulletin I have learned of two bright talents in that country.

Jamba Dashdondog is a prolific children’s author and advocate. After the fall of communism in 1990 he outfitted an oxcart as a mobile children’s library and personally began driving it--he later upgraded to a van--to Mongolia’s remote villages in an effort to bring books to children who otherwise would not have any. The SCBWI notice is about an autobiographical article he is going to publish in an upcoming issue of Cricket magazine, but according to this article from last summer Dashdondog has already published fifty children’s books and sixty books of poetry. This more complete biographical sketch gives much more detail, and here is a pdf of a speech of his. This pdf of an article by Mongolia’s President Natsag Bagabandi pays honor to Dashdondog and his work within the context of discussing what Mongolian children read (a healthy mix of both indigenous and foreign books, which reflects what I found when I gave a presentation on Mongolian cinema as an undergraduate student). The SCBWI article also noted that Dashdondog has been named a finalist for the Astrid Lindgren Award.

The other noted author was poet O. Sundui. I was able to find less information about him online, but his children’s poem “When the Sun Eats with Its Golden Rays” will be published in English in an upcoming issue of Highlights Magazine.