#WorldKidLit Wednesday: An Interview with Author and Translator Lyn Miller-Lachmann

Posted on by Nanette McGuinness

Lyn Miller-Lachmann is a multiply published author whose books include Torch, Moonwalking, Gringolandia, and Rogue, among many. She also is the translator (primarily from Portuguese and also Spanish into English) of a number of books for young readers, including Three Balls of Wool, Lines, Squiggles, Letters, Words, and Pardalita, a 2024 Mildred L. Batchelder Honor Book … Continue reading #WorldKidLit Wednesday: An Interview with Author and Translator Lyn Miller-Lachmann

#WorldKidLit Wednesday: Wankijũ, Child of Mine

Posted on by Klem-Marí Cajigas

Coming of age stories are a often visited theme in young adult and even middle grades literature. It is not a common theme in picture books, however. Forthcoming from Catalyst Press, Wankijũ, Child of Mine is a picture book bildungsroman of a Kenyan girlhood. Like other titles from Catalyst Press, it gives pride of place … Continue reading #WorldKidLit Wednesday: Wankijũ, Child of Mine

#IntlYALitMonth Review: Sugar Town Queens

Posted on by Emily Corbett

Review by Jennifer Gouck Fifteen-year-old Amandla’s mother, Annalisa, has had a vision: if Amandla wears a blue bedsheet hastily fashioned into a dress to school today, its magic will bring her father, who has been missing since before she was born, home forever.   Annalisa has lots of visions. She also has a broken memory that … Continue reading #IntlYALitMonth Review: Sugar Town Queens

#IntlYALitMonth Review: Bitter

Posted on by Emily Corbett

Review by Kelly-Anne McDonald "All these feelings were knotted inside her - how helpless she felt, how hopeless Lucille felt, how even talking about change felt like a joke, a cruel hope." Bitter is set in the imagined city of Lucille, which is rife with corruption and police brutality.  Ordinary citizens have been oppressed for … Continue reading #IntlYALitMonth Review: Bitter

#WorldKidLit Wednesday: Mayowa and the Masquerades

Posted on by Planet Picture Book

Mayowa wants to stay in the city and play computer games rather than visit his grandmother in another town. But he doesn’t stay in a bad mood for long! Especially when his new friend Denuyi takes him on a tour of the neighborhood. In Mayowa and the Masquerades, the two boys share in simple wonders: … Continue reading #WorldKidLit Wednesday: Mayowa and the Masquerades

#Translationthurs: The Perfect Nine by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o

Posted on by winstonsdad

Now I have reached 2021, and I had to pick this book as I haven't had a book from Africa in my choices. This writer is always a name that is on the list of writers who could win the Booker and is near the top of that list. He originally wrote his first book … Continue reading #Translationthurs: The Perfect Nine by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o

#EndangeredAlphabets: Succeed at Your Peril

Posted on by endangeredalphabets

Topographic map in the Bamum script from early 20th-century Cameroon. Image courtesy of the Incunabula Library. Creating a new script for an indigenous people during a colonial era is a two-edged sword. The desire to claim and assert one’s cultural identity may provide the driving force that sustains an author through the long, hard work … Continue reading #EndangeredAlphabets: Succeed at Your Peril

#EndangeredAlphabets: Whatever You Do, Don’t Call It Picture-Writing

Posted on by endangeredalphabets

Papyrus painting. Photo by the author. Today this column ventures through not only space but time—to ancient Egypt, or more accurately to a papyrus painting in the style of Egyptian hieroglyphics, kindly given to me by the parents of a student graduating from my writing program, a decade ago.   Like most people, I know … Continue reading #EndangeredAlphabets: Whatever You Do, Don’t Call It Picture-Writing

#EndangeredAlphabets: Beyond the Alphabet

Posted on by endangeredalphabets

The Adinkra symbol Aya, the fern, which stands for resilience and resourcefulness. Carving and photo by the author. My book Writing Beyond Writing came about because of the Adinkra symbols of Ghana. These are remarkable symbols, each of which is a kind of graphic shorthand for a proverb or piece of traditional wisdom—not a letter … Continue reading #EndangeredAlphabets: Beyond the Alphabet

#EndangeredAlphabets: Another Script Author Murdered

Posted on by endangeredalphabets

Article One of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Pahauh Hmong script One of the most interesting discoveries results of research by the Endangered Alphabets Project is that fully half of all scripts in use around the world today were not adopted and/or adapted from an existing script—they were invented by an individual or … Continue reading #EndangeredAlphabets: Another Script Author Murdered