Creating Children's Books Where None Exist

Imagine building a children's book industry from scratch. That's what the Open Society Institute (OSI) hopes to do in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, and Haiti, where high-quality children's books are largely nonexistent in schools. "What they have is either not developmentally appropriate or doesn't deal with contemporary issues, or is so expensive people can't afford it," says OSI's Elizabeth Lorant.

The challenge for OSI, an organization founded by philanthropist George Soros, is how to create a demand for children's books in places where none exists—and to do this on a shoestring budget. Lorant and her colleague Martin Greenwald decided the way to go was to help the countries grow their own children's book industries. How? By publishing on the Web.

Called Children's Web Publishing, the program first needs to teach prospective authors how to write children's books. To do that, Greenwald, the former publisher of Facts on File, turned for advice to American children's book experts, primarily at the Children's Book Council and the Society for Children's Book Writers and Illustrators. He then put together a team of children's book experts who next month will travel to various countries to give workshops on writing children's books.

Thirty people will take part in each workshop. Then each writer will submit a manuscript to an editorial board made up of representatives from three American children's publishers, as well as representatives of various regions in the targeted countries. The board will then choose the best manuscripts and publish them, complete with illustrations, on the Web.

Because the countries in question contain a multitude of ethnic groups, all the books will be written in English. It's up to participating educators in each region to translate the books into the local language and post the translations on the Web. That way, all the books will be available in several languages. And because each will have the same format—the spreads will consist of one page of text next to an illustration—users can simply pick the language they want and print out their own book.

OSI is contributing $700,000 over two years to get the project going, but ultimately, Lorant and Greenwald hope their project will go out of business—because there will be such a great demand for the new books that foreign publishers will create children's titles of their own.