PBBY board member and children’s book illustrator Beulah Taguiwalo says that the award used to be known as simply the PBBY prize, but adopted the name of Alfrredo Salanga as a tribute to the writer, who died in 1988.
"Every third Tuesday of July was declared National Children’s Book Day, during which we launch the prize-winning book and hand out the cash awards and medals," explains Taguiwalo, who recalls that the decree dates back to Marcos’ time because former First Lady Imelda Marcos was one of the moving spirits behind the Children’s Communication Center, forerunner of the Adarna House, publishing arm of PBBY.
"Adarna House was mandated to publish around ten children’s books every year at low cost, as a kind of intellectual nutrition supplement," Taguiwalo says, recalling that its purpose was like that of a nutribun for the imagination.
The padrino of Adarna House is of course the poet Rio Alma, kumpare of Salanga–which explains the connection in the naming of the noble prize.
Freddie’s widow Alice was invited to the awarding on National Children’s Book Day, but for some reason failed to show up.
Taguiwalo explains some of the contest mechanics. First they solicit the manuscripts, no more than five typewritten pages, double spaced, using a pseudonym, and targeted for the 6-12 age range.
The deadline usually falls in mid-October, or right about the death anniversary of Salanga.
When three designated judges from the PBBY board decide on a winner by November, the illustrator’s contest is launched before Christmas. Deadline for this is in February, "because we know that many Fine Arts students will be busy with their academic requirements in March," says Taguiwalo.
The number of entries vary each year. "Sometimes it can be as low as 30, or as many as 50," she says.
The judges for the illustrator’s prize are different from the writer’s award. For the former, only one PBBY board member is named chairman, with two "outsiders" as members.
Ching is a second-time winner, having won in 1998. Judges Nina Lim-Yuson, Natasha Vizcarra and Ouie Badelles described Ching’s winning as "a pleasant surprise," according to Taguiwalo, because they hadn’t the slightest inkling that it was him again.
"His work was entirely different from his last prize winning work three years ago," Taguiwalo says. "If we go by what we thought was his style, we would never speculate that this new set of illustrations was also done by him."
Mariano has a brother who is also an artist, Jonathan. Both have done covers and art design for books of the De La Salle University Press.
Past winners include such familiar names as Joanne de Leon, Paul Eric Roca, and the Gamos brothers. A good number come from the Ilustrador ng Kabataan (ink), of which Badelles is president.
The illustrator’s entries for this year were exceptionally strong, says Taguiwalo, who has illustrated Sampaguita by Mailin Paterno-Locsin and Junior Starfish and the Rainbow by Alfred and Mirava Yuson.
"The judges had a difficult time trimming down the list, until finally we also decided, after coming up with the winner, to hand certificates of recognition to the five runners-up," she says, a list that included Frances Marie Alcaraz, Beth Parrocha Doctolero and Jomike Tejido.
"Everyone agreed that the illustrations with the clever ‘visual riddles’ had a distinct advantage: the more time you spend looking at them, the more things you see and discover," Taguiwalo says.
Tejido submitted a 3-D sculpture as his entry, a rarity. "But we looked again at the rules and there’s nothing that says that entries should be limited to a two-dimensional flat surface drawing," Taguiwalo says, adding that in the past, they’d also received entries consisting of mixed media paste-ups.
The winning entry has never been done in black and white, perhaps indicating that the judges understand a child’s bias for color.
Each year, the winning art works are put on exhibit at the CCP on the day the PBBY-Salanga Prize is handed out. This year set a precedent, because aside from Ching’s work, those of the runners-up were also exhibited.
As for Canon, she got the nod from judges Neni Sta. Romana, Emily Abrera and Ani Almario.
Canon teaches at preschool and is a young mother, whose baby is seven months old. It’s not hard to imagine where she got the inspiration for her prize-winning story, "Bakit Matagal ang Sundo Ko?"
"It is about a little girl waiting for her mother to pick her up from school. That must have happened to legions of little boys and girls, or to their friend, their cousin, their sister, their brother. Everyone has a version of this story in their lives," Taguiwalo says.
Past winners of the writer’s prize include Vizcarra, of the writer’s group Kuting, Paterno-Locsin, Carla Pacis, whose prizewinning story in 1998 was illustrated by Ching, and three-time winner Edgardo Maranan.
There has never been an instance where the winner of the writer’s prize also was the winning illustrator, although there is always a possibility that a local Maurice Sendak–winner of the Caldecott award in the US–is waiting to be discovered.
Aside from the prize money and the medal, winners are assured of getting their work published by Adarna House.
As for the so-called lean years, when a children’s book failed to land even a nomination in the annual Manila Critics Circle’s National Book Award, Taguiwalo says she has to research in PBBY archives if those years coincided with the time they had fewest entries for the competition.
Taguiwalo herself won third prize in an illustrator’s contest for her work in Sampaguita, the studies of which she did during a Goethe Haus workshop in 1991.
A former mathematics teacher at the Philippine Science High School –where she met co-teacher Rio Alma–and at UP, Taguiwalo ventured in the world of graphics by a happy accident.
In 1981 she applied as illustrator for the coffeetable project Dances of the Emerald Isles of Leonor Orosa Goquinco and was hired by Nik Ricio. And she’s been illustrating ever since.
"In class even while I was still a student, I never really listened to the teacher but just drew," she says. "There is an expression, ‘Natanggal na ang bubong at lahat, hindi pa rin tumigil sa kababasa o kado-drawing’. Reading and drawing were like that for me, and they are still like that up to now."
For eight years she was production manager of the Hong Kong-based World Executive Digest, although these past years she has been mostly freelancing–providing editorial and design services for publications ranging from technical monographs to coffeetable books. She and husband Mario, a writer and researcher, have three sons.
Taguiwalo says that she would draw a children’s book for free because it is what gives her the greatest joy.
"As far as I can remember, my idea of being awake was synonymous with reading, looking at picture books for hours on end and drawing all day and if possible all night," she says. "There is nothing that will compare with eventually being able to add to those lovely illustrated children’s books that excited my imagination when I was small and transported me to faraway places in my head, without me leaving my perch in the balkon of our nipa and bamboo house."