A round table was held in Minsk under the auspices of the Union of Belarusian Writers. The round table was fully dedicated to children's literature, with the Swedish writer Yuya Wieslander as the guest of honor, who arrived in Belarus for her third visit.
Representatives of two independent publishing houses "Logvinau" and "Galiyafs", publisher Zmitser Kolas, Belarusian children's writers and poets, journalists and observers and the creator of the puppet theater took part in the discussion. Honestly, I had a full sense of backstage - that's how the Belarusian children's book is made!
The tone of the whole meeting was set by the gratitude of the guest for a warm welcome in Minsk and Vitsebsk, for the attention of the press, even an assumption was born that Swedish writers should be recommended to go to Belarus if they want to feel like superstars.
The politeness of the guest was pleasant, but it is also true that this round table was interesting for the Belarusian side in the first place, because, as the moderator of the meeting, poet and translator Andrei Khadanovich explained later, no round tables dedicated to children's literature had been held in Belarus for thirty years. This was said almost jokingly.
As a result of the participants' speeches, I made it clear to myself what kind of problems the Belarusian authors and publishers have to overcome. People who publish children's books in the Belarusian language in the present conditions are real heroes. This is pure asceticism. I see the range of their problems as follows:
Low distribution and use of the Belarusian language (at least in the cities where children's books are bought and read more actively).
Low interest of readers in the Belarusian children's books.
High competition from imported books in Russian language.
Insufficient financing.
Small royalties.
Low print-runs.
Internal opposition of Russian-speaking and Belarusian-speaking writers.
I may seem like a complete idealist, but I don't see any difference in what language children will read in (yes, but no) as long as they are interested in reading. They will also take the book in the Belarusian language if it seems relevant to them, especially since the interest in the native language is growing exponentially. Therefore, I see only advantages in the coexistence of two linguistic cultures, at least in the issue of children's reading development.
The most important question is what to read. Children's and teenage literature is literally changing and transforming before our eyes. A corpus of modern texts, including translated ones, has appeared in Russian, which differ in a new attitude to the life of a child and teenager, to the description of their problems and interests. For the Belarusian children's literature, these are isolated cases so far, and they can be regarded as rather an exception.
Recently, the October statistics of sales of the independent bookstore "Bookstore Logvinau" was published. It turned out that the second place after Sviatlana Aleksievich's books was taken by the new book by Yuia Vislander, although its presentation took place only in the last days of the month. Nadezhda Jasminski's book of fairy tales, designed by one of our best illustrators, Katerina Dubovik, was also included in the top ten most popular ones.
Even when these statistics were not made public, Andrei Khadanovich half-jokingly named Yuya Wieslander the most read in Belarus children's author, writing in Swedish, after Astrid Lindgren and Tuwe Jansson. It seems to me that this is partly due to an acute shortage of books of high quality in the Belarusian language.
Although this acute shortage is observed only in a very small stratum of readers, because according to Aksana Sprynchan, a children's writer, poetess and editor of the publishing house "Mastatskaya Litaratura," which has published four books about Mama Mu in recent years, parts of the circulation of two of these books are still in the publishing house, although they have already received discounts.
In general, according to Aksana Sprynchan, it becomes clear to what extent the Belarusian children's book lives. The average circulation was 2000 until recently, which is even good if we compare at least with the Russian circulation of 5000 copies and present the difference in the number of the population. Now the circulation is reduced to 1600, 1000 copies, and nowhere below.
to be continued in the next part