The Marsh Award for Children's Literature in Translation, 2007       The prizegiving ceremony for the Marsh Award for Children's Literature in Translation, now entering its second decade, took place at the Arts Club in London on 23 January. Speaking for her fellow judges, Wendy Cooling, educationalist, consultant, author, critic, broadcaster and winner of the 2006 Eleanor Farjeon Award, said in her address before awarding the prize to Anthea Bell: 'There is now, more than ever, a need to offer young people real choice in their reading - a range of books that offers them a view of the whole world'. The following brief extracts from her compelling and heartfelt speech, which we are pleased to offer our readers, demonstrate why these doors to other worlds are so rewarding to open.       Children's books in translation are part of our literary heritage. I grew up with Heidi and remember being fascinated by her mountain life - as remote from my hill-less Norfolk childhood as another planet - but I empathised with her because her emotional development, the core of her life, was rather like mine. The setting and the challenges were different but the human heart of the story was so like my own. I don't think I knew as a child that the Brothers Grimm, Hans Andersen and Charles Perrault had written their stories in another language - their universal tales spoke to me of different worlds but the magic and wonder of them fitted comfortably into the world of my imagination. I've just read an extraordinary new novel by Marcus Sedgewick, Blood Red, Snow White which weaves together the story of Russia in the first half of the twentieth century and the story of Arthur Ransome, author of Old Peter's Tales as well as the sailing adventures that we know so well. Ransome read children's books in Russian to teach himself the language. In the introduction to Old Peter's Tales, Ransome wrote: 'Russian fairyland is different. Under my windows the wavelets of the Volkhov are beating quietly in the dusk. A gold light burns on a timber raft floating down the river. Beyond the river in the blue midsummer twilight are the broad Russian plain and the distant forest. Somewhere in that great forest of trees - a forest so big that the forests of England are little woods beside it - is the hut where old Peter sits at night and tells these stories to his grandchildren.' Sadly I don't have Ransome's affinity for language so I must rely on the translators to give me entry to those distant forests. Over the years the Award has celebrated the work of the translator and we hope has encouraged publishers to take a world view of literature and add to their lists books from other countries. The entry for this year's award was the biggest ever but still only two per cent of books published in the UK are translations - the figure in France and Germany is between forty and fifty per cent. I've recently visited countries as distant and as different as Korea and Taiwan and seen bookshops flooded with books from the UK - many in English and many in translation. Even my own collection of rhymes and stories for the under threes has been translated into Korean - it looks beautiful and I'd love to know what they've done with the poems and rhymes! In the same way that I believe all children should have access to good teaching that will enable them to learn the skills of reading and learn how to choose from the wealth of books available, I believe they should have access to the whole world of books. As they will meet fiction and poetry - some trivial and some life-changing - they should meet books originating in all corners of the world. We can't all travel everywhere but we can visit the world in books. Books have aroused my curiosity and made me a traveller, they've aided understanding and built up affections for very different lands and lives. Publishers be clever, seek these books out, be bold, translate and publish - and please put the translator's name on the front cover. Have faith and give these books time to build. The Marsh Award recognises the best translation into English of a children's book published in the previous two years, and so to this year's short listed translators - all working alone and needing to be storytellers as well as language experts. What were the judges looking for? First and foremost, a good, well-told story and then something extra - a perfect voice, a feel for character, a sense of place. I remember Robert Louis Stevenson's words: 'Bright is the ring of words/ When the right man rings them' I know that these short listed translators were the right men and women to give these stories to English-speaking children. The Runners-Up Cornelia Funke's Dragon Rider, translated by Anthea Bell (The Chicken House) This takes us on a magical journey. Firedrake, a young dragon, his brownie friend and a lonely boy come together by chance and fly across the world to find the place where dragons can live in peace for ever. The translation of this splendid fantasy is full of life, movement and pace, and the strong, sympathetically-drawn characters fly from the pages as the story progresses. Faiza Guene's Just Like Tomorrow, translated by Sarah Adams (Random House) This book in contrast offers a taste of gritty realism as a teenager tells her story. She's a first generation French girl with Algerian parents and father has gone back home. The translator has found a strong contemporary voice, brash and witty and very real to enable us to share Doria's story. There's humanity, humour, toughness and much more in this book. Guus Kuijer's The Book of Everything, translated by John Niewenhuitzen (Young Picador) Nine-year-old Thomas just wants to be happy. Not so easy in post-Nazi Amsterdam and living with a violent father. This is a shocking and totally original story of a boy trying to make sense of an impossible world. He sees what others don't and records things in his Book of Everything. An adult ally feeds his imagination with books and as he loses his fear happiness begins to seem possible. A translation that makes us feel the boy's pain and totally captures the innocence of Thomas. Henning Mankell's A Bridge to the Stars, translated by Laurie Thompson (Andersen Press) What do you do when your mother abandons you? An eleven-year-old boy living in an isolated village in Sweden during the long, cold, dark winter of 1956 tries to deal with this question. In this coming-of-age novel, Joel haunts the streets, makes unexpected friends and begins to understand. The translator's lyrical language evokes a strong sense of time and place and helps the reader to live for a while in a very different world. Lilli Thal's Mimus, translated by John Brownjohn (Allen & Unwin) A huge book in every way, set in a medieval world of political intrigue, rivalry and betrayal. A king and later his son are tricked into the enemy's court; the King is sent to the dungeons and the Prince must be apprentice to Mimus, the strange and unpredictable court jester; he must learn to play the fool and entertain the court if his father is to live. 'Word-fencing' is at the core of a jester's wordplay and this translator reflects this in his text as he brings this gripping fantasy to a new readership. The Winner Kai Meyer's The Flowing Queen, translated by Anthea Bell (Egmont Press) This time the reader's journey is to a mythical nineteenth century Venice, the last free city in the world, threatened for many years by the mighty Egyptian Empire. The mysterious Flowing Queen is the city's protector and is soon protected herself in the mind and body of a young girl. Merle and the Flowing Queen within her escape on the back of a wonderful, ancient flying stone lion and the story continues. A fabulous fantasy packed with intrigue, danger and magic and a flowing, pacy translation that gives real life to the strange characters who inhabit this ancient fantasy world. The Marsh Award for Children's Literature in Translation is administered by the National Centre for Research in Children's Literature at Roehampton University and sponsored by the Marsh Christian Trust. The publicity is subsidised by The Arts Council of England.