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
It’s that time of year again--or at least it was when I wrote this post: San Diego Comic Con! For those who may not know, San Diego Comic Con is a huge four-and-a-half day lollapalooza of an annual convention celebrating all things comics related. There are panels with authors and actors; talks about art, craft, … Continue reading #WorldKidLit Wednesday: Four Eisner- Nominated Graphic Novels in Translation
Welcome back to #WorldKidLit month! Today we will be looking at two picture books by French author and illustrator, Claude Ponti. Ponti's book feature fanciful illustrations and even more fantastical language - his books have been translated into 13 languages, but as FranceLivre noted, he can be a headache for translators, as the French in … Continue reading #WorldKidLit Month 2025: Claude Ponti
Today's post comes to us from Angela Roberts. Felicita Sala is an author and illustrator whose work I return to again and again. I have read and reread her stories and frequently recommend them to my patrons. My first encounter with Sala’s work was about six or seven years ago, on the recommendation of a … Continue reading #WorldKidLit Month 2025: Author and Illustrator Felicita Sala
Our next post is a conversation between educators about a specialized book club in Portland, Maine, USA. They discuss book club title selection, favorite international mysteries, and the problems with "translation" in a beloved series. Enjoy! - Rebecca Starr My name is Lynn Lawrence-Brown, and I am a Taiwanese-American teacher librarian working at Shrewsbury International … Continue reading #WITMONTH 2025: International Women of Mystery
A playful read-aloud board book for readers age 0-3, Who Ate the Little Bug? is filled with vivid colors and a tactile design of concentric die-cut circles that will entice very young readers into touching and engaging with its text. The concept is simple. Each page introduces an animal that MIGHT have eaten the little … Continue reading #WorldKidLit Wednesday: Who Ate the Little Bug?
Written by Angela Erickson Those of us who work or live in a world of books know that perhaps the richest terrain for graphic novelists is memoir and biography. As I type this, I can picture the covers of Maus, Persepolis, and Dragon Hoops -- some of the graphic memoirs that I regularly press into … Continue reading #INTYALITMONTH: Graphic Novels of Displacement
Written by Angela Erickson From Skeptic to Enthusiast (Again!) When I wrote recently about my evolving relationship with graphic novels, I focused on the nonfiction science titles in translation that had caught me by surprise. I wrote about those first because they were what I have been reading most recently, but it was not graphic … Continue reading #INTYALITMONTH: Feminism, Storytelling & the Power of the Graphic Novel
Written by Angela Erickson My Early Skepticism I’ve been thinking a lot about graphic novels lately. As a former Head of Middle School English, the teachers in my department and I often struggled to get students to move from graphic novels to traditional novels. And to be fair, there’s research suggesting that graphic novels cultivate … Continue reading #INTYALITMONTH: Seeing Science in Translation
Global Literature in Libraries Initiative 