Review by Joanna Snellin Masculinity has become a hot topic in recent years, and rightly so. With the internet a breeding ground for incels and misogynists, one can’t help but fear for the future of masculinity and what it’s like for teenagers exploring this rocky terrain. In response to this, there have been, thankfully, some … Continue reading #IntlYALitMonth Review: Mask Off
#IntlYALitMonth Review: Death at the Voyager Hotel
Review by Karla Edwards Death at the Voyager Hotel is a whodunit novel by Kwei Jones-Quartey set in the bustling city of Accra, West Africa. The book provides a rich and intricate portrayal of life and culture in Accra and is full of suspense and fascinating characters. Jones-Quartey's novels offer insight into various aspects of … Continue reading #IntlYALitMonth Review: Death at the Voyager Hotel
#WorldKidLit Wednesday: An Interview with Author and Translator Lyn Miller-Lachmann
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Global Literature in Libraries Initiative 