Written by Melissa Cooper A flurry of kindergarteners zoom past on tricycles, sticks clenched between their teeth, fully in character as Nezuko, the demon from the wildly popular manga Demon Slayer. This series took Japan by storm, captivating everyone from toddlers to teens. Despite its violent story - beginning with the brutal slaughter of the … Continue reading #INTYALITMONTH: Manga, Manhwa, and Manhua
#WorldKidLit Wednesday: Grandma’s Roof Garden
In our big, bustling hometown in southwest China,On the top floor of an apartment tower, lives an old grandma.A weather-worn apron covers her cornflower blue blouse,And she putters about town, lugging her little cart around. In Grandma’s Roof Garden, a delightful, heartwarming picture book for ages 4-8, we meet an eccentric, energetic grandmother. With enviable … Continue reading #WorldKidLit Wednesday: Grandma’s Roof Garden
#EndangeredAlphabets: Impeaching the Ghosts: Writing and Magic
Batak pustaha. Image courtesy of the Incunabula Library. I was on Twitter the other day and came across a tweet from Philip Boyes of the University of Cambridge, an archaeologist and linguist working on the Bronze and Iron Age Levant. He had been researching early Chinese handwriting manuals and came across this passage: “Strangely, it … Continue reading #EndangeredAlphabets: Impeaching the Ghosts: Writing and Magic
#EndangeredAlphabets: The Songbook Scripts
Zhuang Musicians in Longzhou. Source: Wikipedia Those of us from Western Europe and the Americas use a script that is so widely used we barely recognize it as a script. In fact, we often refer to it as “the” alphabet, as though there were only one. For us, our script is writing itself; most of … Continue reading #EndangeredAlphabets: The Songbook Scripts
#EndangeredAlphabets: The Saddest Scripts
"Thank you all" written in the Nüshu syllabary. Photo and carving by the author. Over the past decade, my research for the Endangered Alphabets project has found scripts that are exclusively sacred or spiritual, others used only for magic and divination, some employed solely for accounting and bookkeeping, some even for notating songs. Writing, then, … Continue reading #EndangeredAlphabets: The Saddest Scripts
Global Literature in Libraries Initiative 