The Story of "Al Salwa Publishing House"
By : Taghreed A. Najjar  

The article is set against the recent historical background  of  children Literature in the Arab world. Article published in German in "Literatur Nachrichten" Oct. 2004

I published my first book in 1976. It was called "Safwan Al Bahlawan" (Safwan the Acrobat).

In 1976 there were no publishing houses in Jordan that specialized in publishing children books. It was thought that children books were too costly because they would have to be printed in color and on better quality paper.

There were very few illustrators and almost none who had any experience with children books. Children books were exported to Jordan from Egypt and from Lebanon and later from Iraq.

For years Egypt led the Arab world with its classic original and translated books by Kamel Kilani and others. My generation grew up reading his books. But the times were changing and the public needed more.

Many people in Jordan were aware of the great need for better quality Arabic books than what was available. A few of us started a project to publish children books. Just out of college, I was very excited that my dream of seeing one of my stories published was about to become true. We had a lot of enthusiasm but little funds or financial resources.

The head of the printing press in the Royal society of Jordan supported our project and offered the services of the society's printing press.

My Book ( Safwan al Bahlawan) was to be the first in a series. As we couldn't find an illustrator to illustrate the book and since I dabbled somehow in art I offered to do the illustrations myself Finally the book (Safwan Al Bahlawan) was out. We were delighted with it but we were immediately faced with the problems of distribution and marketing.

I started to distribute and market the books single handedly at schools and at book exhibitions. It was time consuming and economically not viable. Sadly this was the one and only book to come out of our collective project. Interest in Children books in Jordan markedly increased after 1979, the year proclaimed by the United Nations as the "Year of the Child."

It became part of the governmental policy to encourage the publication of children's books The media started focusing more on the subject and this resulted in many more people venturing into the field.

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In the seventies and eighties two publishing houses affected the awareness of people all over the Arab world. One was Dar al Fata al Arabi a Palestinian publishing house that was established in Lebanon . The other was an ambitious intensive publishing project initiated by the ministry of Culture in Iraq.

Dar al Fata al Arabi invested a lot of money in an ambitious project to publish children's books . It enlisted the expertise of the best known artists in the Arab world like Egyptian artist Hilmi Touni , Al labad Hijazi ,Adli Rizkallah, Bahjat, Mahmoud Fahmi to name a few. They were all well known artists in the art world but Dar al Fata al Arabi convinced them to try illustrating for children. They took the challenge and dazzled the Arab world. The books were printed according to international specifications. The Arab people savoured good quality children's books that were truly Arab, with original stories, original illustrations by different artists in different styles.

Since Dar al Fata al Arabi was Palestinian, the themes of many of the books were metaphors about occupation, the Palestinian Diaspora, the yearning for the homeland and the love of the land.

These are themes with which people all over the Arab world identified. Dar al Fata al Arabi books became an instant hit. The publishing house managed to distribute its books all over the Arab world. Some of their books were translated into other languages.
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An example is Zakaria Tamer's " The Home". Their books were reprinted again and again. Like many others I was very excited about this dynamic publishing house and I decided to send my stories to them. To my delight four of my books were accepted for publication. Payment and rights for the author were negligible but that did not matter as the most important aim for me at the time was to get published and distributed widely.

Sadly in a few years time Dar al Fata al Arabi lost its lead because of the political turmoil in the area and internal problems. But Dar al Fata's achievement is that it opened people's eyes to the fact that original Arabic children books can be attractive thus setting a different standard of expectation from the public. The other publishing project that had an immense effect on the perceptions of people came from Iraq under Saddam Hussein Before the Iraq-Iran war Saddam Hussein had aspirations of becoming a patron of the arts taking as his model Haron Rashid, an Abbassid Caliphate.

The Iraqi government allocated a lot of funds to support the publishing of books as well as to support art and artists. In this golden era ( end of 70s until 1988) a large number of excellent original and translated children's books were published. The illustrations were done by professional artists and art schools flourished. Printing quality was of a very good standard as well. The books for the preschool children were cardboard pages. A first printing of 250,000 copies of each book and distributed them all over the Arab world for negligible prices. Needless to say this was great for the Arab public who enthusiastically bought the Iraqi books for their children.

But there was a negative effect on writers and small publishers from other parts of the Arab world who could not compete with these subsidized books. The Iran Iraq war went on for eight years and was followed by the First Gulf war and then by International sanctions against Iraq, then by the second gulf war. The number of new titles dropped from 70 titles a year in the late seventies to 12 in the late eighties. During the decade of International sanctions on Iraq Artists, writers and intellectuals left Iraq in droves. Such an exodus was disastrous for Iraq, but the Arab world that welcomed these refugees benefited immensely from their expertise.

Some Iraqi artists settled in Jordan and played an active part in the then slowly starting burgeoning publishing business. During this time, although the dream of publishing my stories never left me, I was busy raising a family with my husband in Saudi Arabia. I followed the publishing business and corresponded with any likely publishing house but nothing came out of it. In 1985 my family and I came back to Jordan and I took a job as a first-grade teacher.
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This job gave me the chance to unleash my creative energies, especially as I had a readymade audience, my first graders. I tried to fill the literature gap that existed for beginner readers.I wrote stories with my first graders as the heroes, illustrated them myself and then photocopied them for the kids. I got feedback from the children, parents and other teachers on the level of reading difficulty. I started to look for a publishing house to publish my new books in Jordan. Most of the publishing houses were not interested in publishing children's books, as they thought they were not economically viable.

Finally I convinced a well-known publisher to publish my books. He accepted on condition that I find and pay for an artist, follow up on the artwork, edit the books and bring them to him ready for print. We agreed that he would pay me by giving me a certain quantity of the books to market and sell myself. When I sold them, I would then get my dues as a writer. There were no better deals so I accepted.

It took me a while to find a local artist. I called the series " Best Friends Series" and published six books in this way. Being published by a well-known publishing house made my books well known all over the Arab world. I also got a feel for the market from having to market my books on my own. Since I was doing most of the work of the publisher myself, I decided to leave my teaching job and start my own publishing house. It was a big step for me at the time. I quit my job and took a loan from the bank and in 1996, Al Salwa Publishing House was established. It is a small family business. My husband now helps me run the company and I am hoping that my daughters will decide to work in the publishing house and help expand it in the future.

We now have over 27 titles in print. Gauging the market as we went along, we improved the quality of the paper, engaged several different illustrators and started printing some of the books in hardcover So far, we have had modest commercial success on which we are eager to build.

Currently, many schools use our books as reading supplements.

Many of our books are critically acclaimed. One of our stories has been accepted for publication in the December 2004 issue of the prestigious World Literature Today Journal. Some of our books are being considered for translation into Swedish and, hopefully, German. Additionally, one book has been turned into an animated story for the Arabic version of Sesame Street.