Bookbird
Author Guidelines

Content

Bookbird publishes articles on children’s literature with an international perspective. Articles that compare literatures of different countries are of interest, as are papers on translation studies and articles that discuss the reception of work from one country in another. Articles concerned with a particular national literature or a particular book or writer may also be suitable, but it is important that the article should be of interest to an international audience.

Deadlines

Bookbird is published four times a year (in January, April, July and October),. There is no particular deadline for Bookbird (except in the case of occasional special issues), and papers tend to be published roughly in the order in which they are received.

However, since Bookbird is a refereed journal, and the refereeing process can take several weeks or months, there may be a lapse of quite some time between a paper being received and being accepted for publication, and then another lapse of time before it is actually published. As a rule, papers that are accepted are published within a year of submission.

Format

Papers should be 2000 to 3000 words long.Save your paper as a .DOC file (if you are using Word for Windows) or an .RTF file (if you are a Macintosh user) and send as an email attachment. Send accompanying pictures as .JPGs at 300 dpi.

Please submit papers via email to both kurkjianc@comcast.net and svardell@twu.edu. Use the following formula in the email subject line: ‘Bookbird submission XX’, where XX stands for your initials.

Include some information about yourself (eg, XX lectures in children’s literature at ABC University, Anycity, and has recently published a book on ...’) in the body of the email (or in a separate document), not in the paper itself.

It would be most helpful if you can get permission for reproduction of illustrations from the copyright-holder.

Language

Bookbird is published in English only. If you write in another language, please try to have your work translated by a reputable translator before submitting it. If you have no access to translation facilities, please contact the editors. We can usually cope with papers submitted in any major European language, and it is better to get a paper in the writer’s original language than to get a badly translated paper.

If English is not your mother tongue, do not be too concerned about your standard of English. If your paper is accepted, the editors will work with you on the language.

Even though you are writing in English, please give the names of organisations, institutes and published material in the original language, with an English translation in square brackets, for example

Jens Peder Larsen was awarded the 1992 Children's Book Prize for his book Bronden [The well].

Include diacritical marks (accents, umlauts etc) in all titles and names. (If you can’t do this, then please indicate in a note how the words should correctly be written.) In the case of non-Roman alphabets, please supply a transliteration.

Writing style

Bookbird is a serious academic journal, and as such it publishes, in the main, serious academic articles. This does not mean that we encourage contributors to be sombre or earnest or ‘heavy’ in their style. Although most contributors to Bookbird will be academics or children’s literature professionals, many of the readers may have a more general interest, and we want Bookbird to appeal to them as well as to the professionals. For this reason, we prefer a style that engages the reader’s interest and takes the reader’s requirements into account. So when writing for Bookbird, by all means approach your subject seriously and present your research or your argument as you would for your colleagues, but do keep the more general reader in mind also, and try to make what you have to say as interesting as you can.

Keep in mind that many Bookbird readers do not have English as a mother-tongue, so clarity both in your arguments and in your language is of great value. A simple strategy like breaking up the text with a few headings can be very helpful to a reader who finds it difficult to read a dense text.

Spelling and punctuation

The editors may change your spellings and punctuation to ensure consistency in style across the journal.

Bookbird follows the conventions of American English. The -ize ending, together with its related forms (-ization, -izing), is preferred to -ise and its related forms. You can use any standard desk dictionary published in the United States, but if this is not possible, it is quite in order to use British spelling. The editorial process will take care of spelling standards.

The main thing to note with punctuation is that American English prefers double quotation marks "like this" to singles (use singles within doubles if there is a quotation within a quotation) and that any punctuation mark (a period or comma, for example) usually precedes the closing quotation mark.

Notes and References

Endnotes

Use endnotes rather than footnotes, keyed by superior figure, only when absolutely necessary, for extra information that does not fit into the flow of the text.

Bear in mind that information in endnote form is quite difficult to read, and may be off-putting to readers. So, try to reduce the number of endnotes by using a combination of in-text references and reference lists for bibliographical information. This is a neater and more reader-friendly system and is preferred by Bookbird.

In-text references: children’s books

As a rule, try to keep the text as free of bibliographical clutter as you can. In other words, supply the minimum of information within the text of your paper that is consistent with clarity.

If a book is listed in a bibliography there is no need to duplicate information by also giving bibliographical details in the text, though you may want to mention the date if you are making a particular point to which the date is relevant (for example, the order in which books were published, or the development of the author’s style or thinking).

When you first mention a children’s book in the text, especially one that is not included in a list accompanying the article, it is helpful (and usually sufficient) to add the publisher and date of publication in parentheses in the text:

Jens Peder Larsen was awarded … for his book Bronden [The well] (Fremad 1991).

The publisher’s name may not be necessary if, for example, you have specified that this author is always published by a particular publisher, or if you have included this information elsewhere, in a reference list for example. Place of publication may also be given in in-text references if that is helpful, especially for smaller or less well-known publishing houses, or for publishing houses outside a capital city:
XY was awarded the ... for So and So (Plymouth: Kidsbux 1991).

However, there is no need to give place of publication in in-text references for internationally known publishers such as Puffin or Houghton Mifflin, unless you have a particular reason for drawing attention to the place of publication. Moreover, if a publisher is mentioned several times, it is sufficient to mention the place of publication once in in-text references.

When you next mention the book, there is no need to repeat the publisher or date. Please refer to a previously mentioned children’s book by the title, not by the author–date system. You may abbreviate the title if it is a long one and the abbreviation is clear.

In-text references: critical works

When you first refer to a secondary source or a critical work in the text, please give the author’s name (and the name of the article or book under discussion, if you wish) and the date of publication, for example

As Christine Jenkins (1988) argues ...

or

'Heartthrobs and Heartbreaks: A Guide to Young Adult Books with Gay Themes’ (by Christine Jenkins 1988) is a case in point.
After the first mention, use the author–date system. In other words, supply the full bibliographical information in a reference list, and refer to the work in the text by the surname of the author and the date of publication, so that the reader can link the in-text citation to the full bibliographical details in the reference list, for example

As Jenkins (1988) points out ...

or

As we have seen (Jenkins 1988), gay themes in young adult literature ...

If you are citing more than one book or article by a particular author published in a single year, use letters to distinguish them (in both the in-text reference and the reference list), for example

Brown (1997a) argues …, and he goes on to make the point (Brown 1997b) that…

In the interests of readability, please do not add page-numbers to in-text references.

Reference lists and bibliographies: secondary sources

The main function of the reference list is to provide full bibliographical information for works cited in abbreviated form in the text, using the author–date system. Additional works (other than those cited in the text) may also be listed (as ‘Further reading’ or under some such heading). Alternatively, you may amalgamate references (works cited in the text of your article) and other works consulted or recommended, under the rubric ‘Bibliography’.
Use the formats below as models for your reference/bibliographical lists and note the following points:

• Invert surnames (family names) and ‘first’ (given) names (of the first author only in a publication with more than one author): ie put surname (family name) first, followed by given names.
  
  
• Use minimal punctuation.
  
  
• Put the date directly after the author’s name(s) – this helps the reader to make an immediate link between the reference-list material and the author-date citations in the text.

Book

• Sandroni, Laura and Luiz Raul Machado (1986) A criança e I kuvri: Guia pràtico de estimulo à leitura [The child and the book: a practical guide for encouraging reading] São Paulo: Atica

Translated book

• Reuter, Bjarne (1989) Buster's World (trans Anthea Bell) New York: E P Dutton. Originally published as Busters verden Copenhagen: Branner og Korch, 1978

Journal article

• Jenkins, Christine (1988) ‘Heartthrobs and Heartbreaks: A Guide to Young Adult Books with Gay Themes’ Out/Look 3, no. 3 (Fall 1988): 82–91

Book chapter

• James, Louis (1984) ‘Blood and Thunder’ in Ausbruch und Abenteuer: Deutsche und englische Abenteuerliteratur von Robinson bis Winnetou [Escape and adventure: German and English adventure literature from Robinson to Winnetou] (Kevin Carpenter and Bernd Steinbrink eds), pp 47–52 Oldenburg: Bibliotheks- und Informationssystem der Universität Oldenburg

References to books should include the publication date of the original edition (given first) as well as the one cited.

Listing children’s books

It is usually more helpful to readers if you list children’s books separately from the list of secondary sources (since some readers will be more interested in finding out about the children’s books discussed than in following up your academic references). You may wish to include other children’s books – by the same author or on the same theme, for example – as well as the ones discussed in the text.

A list of children’s books by a particular author is usually best organised in chronological (or reverse chronological) order, but a list of children’s books by various authors is probably easier to consult if it is laid out in alphabetical order (by author, not title).

Titles

For books or articles published in English, capitalise the first, last and all major words – not articles, prepositions or conjunctions (unless the first word of the title). Follow this convention, regardless of the capitalisation conventions used by the publisher on the book cover or title page.

For books published in other languages, capitalise the first word only. After that, follow the normal rules of the language: capital letters for proper nouns, and for all nouns in the case of German. Note that in French titles that begin with L’, the L’ is considered a word, and the following word is in lower case (eg L’ogresse en pleurs, not L’Ogresse ...).

When giving an English translation of the title of a book published in a different language, do not put it in italics (since that would suggest the book has actually been published under that title), and capitalise the first word only. Put the translation in square brackets [like this].