Global literature for children exists—but how to find it and connect it with readers? A group of librarians at international schools in Bangkok have developed a new student-choice book award program that 1) helps librarians exchange info about books by authors from around the world, and 2) acquaints students with their finds. Here librarian Kim … Continue reading The Bangkok Book Awards
Someone who looks like a banker walks into the BNL bank on Piazza Matteoti. Someone who looks like a crook—with a broken nose, low forehead, and big, protruding ears—comes out of the police station next door, while eight carabinieri stand smoking on the pavement and laughing and acting out on a friend how they’d arrest … Continue reading Excerpt: La Superba by Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer
In search of a cozy, quirky book to curl up with on a winter evening or to read out loud with a young child? The Cat Who Came in off the Roof, translated from the beloved Dutch children's classic, Minoes, may be just the ticket. Shy newspaper reporter Tibble is in trouble with his editor … Continue reading Review: The Cat Who Came In Off The Roof by Annie M.G. Schmidt
By Heather Lennon Meet Annemarie van Haeringen as we chat with her about her new book, Coco and the Little Black Dress. NorthSouth Books: What inspired you to create a picture book about Coco Chanel? Annemarie: Actually, I was asked by my Dutch publisher Leopold, and the Dutch Gemeente Museum Den Haag to make a … Continue reading Interview with Annemarie van Haeringen, author of COCO AND THE LITTLE BLACK DRESS
Winter Let this winter pass into another winter. No more stately brooding. No bluebird’s eggs. No driven mating or well-built nests. I want the frost to blast the ground forever with every seed or shoot that it conceals. Leave streets as gray as winter has them. The muddy slush of butchered days, two blue mittens … Continue reading The Hunger in Plain View by Ester Naomi Perquin
During the devastation of Hurricane Sandy, the Dutch author Anna Woltz and I switched places. She was hunkered down in New York City while I followed the news from the safety (and sunny weather) of Lisbon, Portugal. But she turned her frightening experience into a page-turning novel, translated by Laura Watkinson and published by the … Continue reading Book Review: A Hundred Hours of Night
by Karen Van Drie This is a very compelling wartime diary of what a women experienced living in Berlin at the end of World War II. The keeper of this diary, which she originally published anonymously, describes the daily struggle to stay alive as her national leaders, nation-state, and city fell to an invading Soviet … Continue reading A Woman in Berlin: Eight Weeks in a Conquered City by Anonymous
WEDNESDAY 1. No one walks through London with a machete. Unless you count the two men passing him just now. Niall had already wrapped up taking pictures of the spot where the Effra River had once emptied into the Thames, when one of the two men looked back at him. The man’s gaze lingered … Continue reading Fade to Black by Zoë Beck
Mr. Squirrel and the Moon Sebastian Meschenmoser, David Henry Wilson (Trans.) NorthSouth Books, 2015 ISBN 978-0735841567 Winter 2015 Top Ten IndieNext Pick When Mr. Squirrel awakens to find that the moon has landed on his tree, he frantically tries to get rid of it before someone suspects him of stealing it and puts him in jail. … Continue reading Title Pick: Mr. Squirrel and the Moon
Darkness Spoken: The Collected Poems Ingeborg Bachmann, Peter Filkins (Trans.) Zephyr Press, 2006 ISBN 0939010844 LIBRARIES The shelves sag. The volumes are weighted down with the past. Their sweat is dust. Their impulse is rigidity. They no longer struggle. They have saved themselves upon the island of knowledge. Sometimes they've lost their conscience. Here and … Continue reading Darkness Spoken by Ingeborg Bachmann
Global Literature in Libraries Initiative 