Today’s post comes to you from Song Yee Paik Since being published a year ago, "Song of a Blackbird" by Maria van Lieshout has been featured twice on GLLI (reviewed by Lynn Miller-Lachmann in March 2025, and explored in an author interview by Kim Tyo-Dickerson in May 2025) and has received significant critical acclaim. Last … Continue reading #WorldKidLit Wednesday: Song of a Blackbird
High schooler Jip has a big problem—an art class assignment to draw a self-portrait. That shouldn’t be a problem, as Jip is a talented artist who can draw bugs, shells, and other items in exquisite detail. Jip is also obsessed with biology in general and insects in particular, spending days (and nights) in an overgrown … Continue reading #WorldKidLit Wednesday: Self-Portrait
In the deep, dark, frigid days of winter, what could be more fun than curling up in a blanket with a shivery ghost story? Set during summer vacation, The Ghosts of Pandora Pickwick is a wonderful combination of two evergreen middle grade tropes: the aforementioned ghost tale and an adoption/origin story. Protagonist Mia Jones has … Continue reading #WorldKidLit Wednesday: The Ghosts of Pandora Pickwick
What’s faster than a jet? Or bigger than a whale? And have you ever wondered how many vertebrae are in a giraffe’s neck? These and myriad other fascinating questions are the focus of Faster Than a Jet, Bigger Than a Whale: An Illustrated Guide to Measuring Our World, a wonderful nonfiction book for readers age … Continue reading #WorldKidLit Wednesday: Faster Than a Jet, Bigger Than a Whale: An Illustrated Guide to Measuring Our World
Thirteen-year-old Vilda lives with her parents and younger sister Irma in northern Sweden. Her father is Swedish and her mother is Sámi. Her Sámi grandfather lives in the same town, and recently she has become interested in learning more about this Indigenous people’s language and culture. But just as her Áddjá begins teaching her to … Continue reading #WorldKidLIt Wednesday: Butterfly Heart
Take a cooking competition in graphic novel format and mix in zany illustrations, alien species and an intergalactic empire. Blend in a reluctant, kindhearted female heroine, top it all off with eco-, exoplanetary, and class politics, and you get The Big Tournament, the first book in the fabulous upper middle grade/YA sci-fi series, Magda: Intergalactic … Continue reading #WorldKidLit Wednesday: The Big Tournament
Equal parts Our Bodies, Ourselves, Margaret Mead, and biology/history explainer, Born a Girl: It Takes Courage is an approachable feminist manifesto for today's teens that embraces difficult topics. Organized around the fictionalized stories of five teenage girls---one each from Nepal, France, Afghanistan, Kenya, and Mexico---this nonfiction YA illustrated book lays out a frank, sympathetic description … Continue reading #WorldKidLit Wednesday: Born a Girl: It Takes Courage
Welcome back to #WorldKidLit month! Today's post comes to us from Nadine Bailey. Moominvalley in November by Tove Jansson (1970) translated by Kingsley Hart (1971) is the final prose Moomin book, written twenty-five years after her first book. The first Moomin book (The Moomins and the Great Flood, translated by David McDuff, 1945) was written … Continue reading #WorldKidLit Month 2025: ‘Moominvalley in November’
Welcome back to #WorldKidLit Month. Today's post comes to us from Lisa Miller. Sharing the precariousness of Earth’s plight in a gentle, hopeful but realistic way is the miracle of Finding a Way to Faraway Valley (2023) written and illustrated by Cecelia Heikkilä, and translated from Swedish into English by Polly Lawson. An old postcard … Continue reading #WorldKidLit Month 2025: The Quest for Legacy in ‘Finding the Way to Faraway Valley’
Welcome back to #WorldKidLit Month 2025! Today's post comes to us from Staci Fox. One of the coolest things about running a library these days? Our readers are more connected to the world than ever before. Whether it's through travel, streaming services, international classmates, or even TikTok trends, there's a real appetite for stories that … Continue reading #WorldKidLit Month 2025: The Moonwind Mysteries
Global Literature in Libraries Initiative 