Children’s Rights in the Multimedia Age: : Proceedings of the Fourth Pacific Rim Conference on Children’s Literature

Citation

Higgins, S.E. (1998), "Children’s Rights in the Multimedia Age: : Proceedings of the Fourth Pacific Rim Conference on Children’s Literature", Asian Libraries, Vol. 7 No. 11, pp. 358-359. https://doi.org/10.1108/al.1998.7.11.358.6

Sheila Egoff founded the Pacific Rim Conference on Children’s Literature in 1976 to provide an international exchange of information on children’s books and cultures among the 38 counties of the Pacific Rim. This compilation of essays, discussion groups and workshops describes the fourth conference held in Kyoto ‐ the first one to be held in the Far East. Okiko Miyake addresses the fact that every country in the world exercises some form of control over the content of school textbooks; therefore, children’s rights to information cannot be said to be without infringement.

An important purpose of the conference was to strengthen personal ties on an international level for all participants. The humanism of “fictional inventiveness”, and the child learning to stand in the world with the realisation of his or her own identity, is a value reiterated by Virginia Hamilton of the USA. Sarah Elizabeth Ellis of Canada believes that electronic media invade places yet do not occupy them in the way books do. Lai Lin Kiang‐Koh of Singapore states that many children prefer to play video games on a PC or view television with their parents than to read in their leisure time. Reading is judged by its usefulness for assignments and in the attainment of better grades; however, through parent education programmes, a greater acceptance of books as good fiction is taking place. Similarly, the current reading environment of Chinese children, according to Jiang Feng, is often characterised by “examination hell” ‐ children do not have sufficient time for independent reading after entering elementary school. That the current education system’s emphasis on entrance examinations seems to suppress the children’s natural desire for reading is again acknowledged by Ri Jae Cheol of Korea.

The publication of children’s books in Malaysia has only gained its impetus in the early 1970s ‐ the mission is just beginning. Tadashi Matsui of Japan states that the most powerful support and the nucleus of power for children is their experience in words and trust in words. Such children learn to develop a strong spiritual mentality. Yet the problem of the concept of a multicultural society, where no kind of lifestyle is excluded, whether by race, gender, age or handicap, is one still to be accepted by the Japanese. In Indonesia the main objection to current trends is not against Western or Japanese translations, but that children read comics much more often than good books. Dorothy Butler of New Zealand speaks of the acts of brutality and neglect that have characterised the traditional treatment of many of the world’s children. This dark underside of exploitation and poverty is not ignored, nor is the theme of “starving in the midst of plenty” ‐ a reflection on the child‐parent relationship as a crucial determinant of human behaviour. The responsibility to create conditions that enable children to survive in the international community of the future is extolled.

This book is a flagship of today’s best minds committed to the theory and practice of international children’s literature and the potential of such literature to be a vehicle of world peace and prosperity. Accordingly, it is highly recommended for any collection devoted to children, children’s literature or social issues.