El Cuento Fantasma/The Invisible Story
Deborah Hallford explains the background to The Invisible Story and its importance to Outside In World
T
here are times when you know a book is special and that is certainly the case with El Cuento Fantasma. The journey of how El Cuento Fantasma became The Invisible Story published in English by Lantana Publishing (2024) is a storied one. In 2014 my co-founder Alexandra Strick and I were searching for inclusive and accessible books from around the world for our Reading the Way research project. [Our aim was to discover how children’s books from other countries depicted disability or made books accessible for people with disabilities.] At the Bologna Children’s Book Fair, we chanced upon El Cuento Fantasma, written by Costa Rican author, journalist and musician Jaime Gamboa, illustrated by Wen Hsu Chen, and published in 2012 by a small publisher in Guatemala, Grupo Amanuense (now based in Uruguay). Alex and I found the book remarkable and knew we had to include it in our project.
We felt that El Cuento Fantasma was a truly original and moving creation, with an atmospheric story that was cleverly constructed. By making the book itself the narrator, Gamboa’s extraordinary metaphor for stories makes it intriguing – a braille book that thinks it is a ‘ghost’ and not like all the other books that surround it because its pages appear to be blank. Once discovered by a blind girl, the story within the book can come to life.
As part of the Reading the Way project, we commissioned an English translation from award-winning translator Daniel Hahn, which conveyed the poetic quality of the text.
"The world is full of stories. Some are as long as lizards, others so short they never even make it as far as The End. There are stories as different from one another as the feathers of birds, as people’s faces, or the uncountable leaves on a great fig tree".
Our ground-breaking research demonstrated that books from around the world have a wealth ofdiverse perspectives on disability and new ways to access stories. We were able to highlight many titles for potential UK publication, as well as valuable learning points and good practices to help shape UK children’s books for a more inclusive future.
We received widespread positive feedback for The Invisible Story across the different focus groups we held, which included individuals, schools and organisations.
"Truly original and beautiful, and, for me, quite moving. The coloured paper cut-outs are exquisitely delicate; you want to reach into the book and touch these characters and shapes, yet to protect their fragile bodies at the same time. Being in this book makes me feel like I have travelled to a new country or visual realm".
“A unique feature of the book is the fact that the narrator is the book itself.”
"Exceptional; both artistically and in the quality of the story and the way it is told"
"Stunning", "a real discovery" and "unforgettable".
Grupo Amanuense had originally intended to publish El Cuento Fantasma in braille but budgeting constraints made this impossible. As part of the OIW project, we felt it was important to have a version in braille, so we asked Access2Books to provide us with large-format English text and braille copies that we could use in focus groups, including one from New College Worcester, a specialist college for blind and partially sighted students aged 11 to 18.
Extract from English/braille version prepared for OIW by Access2Books
The students were enthusiastic about the book. They felt that “it tells the public that there are braille books out there”. The teacher also liked the way the story could be read on different levels. She commented that visually impaired children have often observed that they feel invisible so The Invisible Story presented a positive image of disability. The feedback from the various focus groups and the RNIB suggested that the inclusion of braille represented a positive extra dimension for the book and it was a good example of best practice. However, there were some concerns raised about the ‘accessibility’ of the illustrations in the mock-up version as some students thought the book would be even better if it had a form of illustration that a blind person could appreciate, such as braille labelling/description and embossing, although they did acknowledge that cost would be a major factor in why this might not be achievable.
Page 19 from The Invisible Story, Lantana Publishing, 2024
As part of the research, we set up two publisher focus groups to provide feedback on the merits and suitability of the books selected for publication. Alice Curry from Lantana Publishing took part in one of the focus groups, so when Lantana announced in 2023 that they would be publishing El Cuento Fantasma in English, we were delighted that this special book would finally be available to an English-speaking audience.
Page 5 from The Invisible Story, Lantana Publishing, 2024
Page 21 from The Invisible Story, Lantana Publishing, 2024
Final Spread from The Invisible Story, Lantana Publishing, 2024
The Invisible Story is available in accessible formats from RNIB Bookshare. And at the back of the book there is a page ‘About Braille’.
In a blog written for the Centre for Literacy in Primary Education (CLPE), Jaime Gamboa says The Invisible Story is “a story about a story written in a language that only very special readers can understand – A story crafted specifically for them, for their imagination and sensitivity. A story only they can discover with their fingertips.” Gamboa is also a musician and he makes a comparison to his other passion: “Since I was a child, I have also been immersed in other types of stories, those told in musical scores. To understand them you need to know how to read music.” Like a musical score or a book written in a foreign language, The Invisible Story could have been waiting to be discovered.
Wen Hsu Chen’s mesmerising artwork combines delicate paper cut-outs with splashes of watercolour. The empty pages of the story are conveyed in captivating white silhouette outlines that contrast sharply with the colour displayed for the bright and vivid tales in the library. When the invisible story is finally discovered, colour begins to flood the pages as its tale is released.
Tran
slator Daniel Hahn, commenting on The Invisible Story at a Reading the Way: A Translation Challenge Seminar at the 2015 London Book Fair, said: “It’s a beautifully constructed piece of work with highly unusual illustrations” and “the hardest thing about translating it was that it was doing it justice because it is simply ‘so good’.”
The University of Reading Centre for Book Cultures and Publishing in partnership with OIW held a webinar on 16 October 2024 about the translation of El Cuento Fantasma as The Invisible Story and the recording is now available on the CBCP YouTube Channel
In the webinar, author Jaimie Gamboa talks about how he developed The Invisible Story and the inspiration behind it. Illustrator Wen Hsu Chen provides a fascinating insight into the techniques and the challenges of illustrating the book when the story itself is a character and how you draw something that isn’t tangible and visible. Translator Daniel Hahn reads The Invisible Story and discusses the complexities of its translation and the reason behind the title change from The Ghost Story to The Invisible Story. Alexandra Strick talks about how the Reading the Way project led OIW to discover and fall in love with the book. And Kyla from New College Worcester explains the power of braille and why highlighting books in braille is so important.
© The Invisible Story Exhibition, University of Portsmouth Library
The University of Portsmouth Library has put together a display on The Invisible Story and other accessible books from the Reading the Way collection.
© The Invisible Story Exhibition, University of Portsmouth Library
© Other titles from the Reading the Way Collection. The Invisible Story Exhibition, University of Portsmouth Library
Almost ten years after we discovered this beautiful book it is now available in English for a whole new audience to enjoy.
*In the OIW Research the book is referred to as The Ghost Story but to avoid confusion the published English title is used here.
Further Information
Webinar: The Centre for Book Cultures and Publishing in partnership with Outside in World on the translation of El Cuento Fantasma as The Invisible Story(16th October). Speakers included Jaime Gamboa, Wen Hsu Chen, Daniel Hahn, Alexandra Strick and Kyla from New College Worcester. It is now available on the CBCP YouTube Channel
The Invisible Story display in the University of Portsmouth Library
You can read the research on the The Invisible Story
Reading the Way, Case Study 5.3: An Accessible and Inclusive Book
You can read the full Reading the Way Research here
The Invisible Story was also used in our second Reading the Way2 project
The Invisible Story: A blog by Jaime Gamboa, CLPE (Centre for Literacy in Primary Education) 20th May 2024
The Invisible Story OIW review
Deborah Hallford, November 2024
