Credit (picture): Barefoot Banana
So proud and happy with the two Finnish books I had an opportunity to edit this year. They were launched just at the beginning of December for pre-orders and went out of stock within just half a month. 🎉
Their author/illustrator, Mauri Kunnas, is a very talented artist who wrote many funny picturebooks that have traveled around the world for many decades. It is such an honour for me to introduce Thai readers to the world of sleepy Mr. Hakkarainen, or Hr. Buk in the Danish version (one of the translations I looked into to study editorial decisions for this book). Funny children's books with no particular academic purposes are what have been missing in our industry for a very long time. I still stand my ground that we should give more focus on raising a generation of happy, good-humoured children, who can laugh at whatever life throws at them than a depressed competitive one. A positive reception like this helps strengthen my faith in making children's books fun again. 😄
I also had a great time editing the Thai version of "Joulupukki" (Santa Claus) and learned a lot about the Christmas tradition and beliefs in Finland. Working with the book, I came to realise that Christmas I had known was largely based on Coca-Cola's depiction and that the more diverse cultural representations had been lost to me and many, in my country at least. Seeing diversity in children's books is very important to help children become aware of myriad aspects of humanity and grow up curious and wanting to understand others in different parts of the world.
The sudden flash of pre-orders for this book has proven that the old belief amongst Thai publishing houses that Christmas is somewhat irrelevant to Thai readers, and therefore does not worth translating, has started to fade away. Hopefully, after a lot of efforts by many in the book industry, cultural diversity will become one of the main topics for Thai children's books soon. 🙂
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