Funding award for publisher
Perthshire-based publisher Tippermuir Books has been awarded funding to publish a book promoting the Scot’s language.
For the second year in a row, the local publisher has received the support of the Scottish Government, gaining a prestigious Scots Language publication grant through the Scottish BookTrust.
In 2019 Tippermuir secured the cash to publish William Soutar’s collected poetry.
Tippermuir - the publisher of several titles in Scots including The Tale of the Wee Mowdie and A Squatter o
Bairnrhymes - has been awarded the grant for its forthcoming children’s book (in Scots)‘The Nicht Afore Christmas’.
The beautifully illustrated book is based on the classic Christmas poem,‘A Visit from St Nicholas’by Clement Clarke Moore, and has been imaginatively translated into Scots by Irene McFarlane, with Rosemary Cunningham’s illustrations.
The Scottish Book Trust’s Scots Language Publication Grant is supporting nine new titles, assisting the publication of new work (including translated texts), reprinting existing historical or culturally significant work, and also effective marketing and promotion of existing and new work.
Irene McFarlane, the translator of A Nicht Afore Christmas, is a Scots language user and writer who has taught Scots language to children for 40 years.
Glasgow illustrator Rosemary Cunningham made drawings for this project, setting the poem in a visually Scottish setting, to match the language – in the Christmas book’s case she used the National Trust for Scotland’s Tenement House in Glasgow for inspiration.