What would you do if you found a baby caiman (a type of alligator)? Would you slip it into your shirt pocket? Unlikely as it seems, that’s what Faoro, a jeweler and watchmaker, did many years ago. The Caiman*, a picture book for ages 5-8, is his story—a real one. Faoro loved animals and let them wander … Continue reading #WorldKidLit Wednesday: The Caiman
READ Eritrea is an East African country situated just above Ethiopia. At one point in the country’s history, it was annexed by Ethiopia, which led to numerous armed conflicts between the Ethiopian army and Eritreans fighting for their country’s independence. Many civilians were forced to flee Eritrea, and they ended up living in refugee camps. … Continue reading The Booktrekker: Eritrea
READ Magical realism seems to be a staple of Latin American literature, so I was not surprised to find it in the book I read for Ecuador, Bruna and Her Sisters in the Sleeping City, by Alicia Yánez Cossío and translated by Kenneth J. A. Wishnia. The title character, Bruna, comes from an eccentric family that was … Continue reading The Booktrekker: Ecuador
READ I love thrillers and suspense novels, but somehow, I managed to miss Peter Høeg’s Smilla’s Sense of Snow, translated by Tiina Nunnally, when it was an international bestseller back in the 1990s. When I was looking for a book to read from Denmark for this project, it seemed like the perfect choice. Smilla Jasperson is … Continue reading The Booktrekker: Denmark
An illustrated book for ages 6-10, The Story of Bodri* is based on the experiences of Swedish-Romanian Hédi Fried. A teenager when she was sent to Auschwitz, author Fried lectures today on racism, democracy, and the Holocaust. She was inspired to write The Story of Bodri when a young attendee at one of her talks asked about … Continue reading #WorldKidLit Weekend: The Story of Bodri
READ The obvious choice when looking for a Colombian author is Gabriel Garcia Márquez, whose brilliant work I’ve read before. But I wanted something different, and I was particularly interested in finding a woman author. A little Internet searching turned up Laura Restrepo, who began her writing career as a political columnist. She has written … Continue reading The Booktrekker: Colombia
READ There were so many books I could have chosen for China, and making a decision about which one to read was difficult. In the end, I picked Dai Sijie's Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, translated by Ina Rilke, because I loved the book’s cover and its title. The narrator is a seventeen-year-old boy, whose … Continue reading The Booktrekker: China
A flock of chickens lives a comfortable, safe life on a farm. It may be rather predictable, but there is plenty of food, and everyone knows their role and their place. So what if one of them is carried off every so often? After all, they're just chickens. But one day the capybaras arrive, seeking … Continue reading #WorldKidLit Wednesday: The Capybaras
READ I got about four-fifths of the way through the book I’d decided to read for Chile, Isabel Allende’s epic The House of the Spirits, before it occurred to me to take a look at Allende’s biography. Alas, Allende wasn’t born in Chile, but in Peru. Since my self-imposed rules for this project require that the author … Continue reading The Booktrekker: Chile
READ A rebellious teenaged prodigy studying piano at an authoritarian school for the musically-gifted in communist Bulgaria – what could possibly go wrong? Plenty, as it turns out, and fifteen-year-old Konstantin learns some hard life lessons in Nikolai Grozni’s semiautobiographical novel Wunderkind. Konstantin’s passion for playing the works of Frédéric Chopin is matched only by his … Continue reading The Booktrekker: Bulgaria
Global Literature in Libraries Initiative 