#WorldKidLit Month Focus on Japan: Rainy Weather From All Angles

Posted on by Avery Fischer Udagawa

Today's post comes to you from Deborah Iwabuchi: When it comes to weather, Japanese children’s books contain lots of it. Today, I present three books on rain that have been translated into English.  While each book is structured around a day full of precipitation—pre-rain, rain, and post-rain—the actual stories are completely different. Every Color of … Continue reading #WorldKidLit Month Focus on Japan: Rainy Weather From All Angles

#WorldKidLit Month: Books from Japan for the Youngest Readers

Posted on by Avery Fischer Udagawa

Today’s post comes to you from Susan E. Jones: A wide range of books from Japan for the youngest readers are waiting to be discovered. Baby and toddler books, especially interactive board books with pop-ups, sliding panels, and manipulative features, entice Japan’s youngest readers into the literary world. While toddler-level picture books may be outnumbered … Continue reading #WorldKidLit Month: Books from Japan for the Youngest Readers

#WorldKidLit Month: Focus on Japan

Posted on by Avery Fischer Udagawa

Welcome to the Global Literature in Libraries Initiative (GLLI) Focus on Japan month! We are author Holly Thompson and Japanese-to-English translator Avery Fischer Udagawa. In tandem with #WorldKidLitMonth, for the month of September, we’ll be sharing posts highlighting favorite Japan books for young people in English translation.  We’ll open with board books for the very … Continue reading #WorldKidLit Month: Focus on Japan

#WorldKidLit: IBBY & GLLI

Posted on by katieday

Last week the 40th IBBY (International Board on Books for Young People) Congress was hosted by IBBY Canada in Ottawa, Canada, with 500+ attendees from 60 countries in attendance. The theme was "Listening to Each Other's Voices" -- and it was echoed across all the sessions, with a special focus on Indigenous and endangered languages … Continue reading #WorldKidLit: IBBY & GLLI

#WorldKidLit Wednesday: Faster Than a Jet, Bigger Than a Whale: An Illustrated Guide to Measuring Our World

Posted on by Nanette McGuinness

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

#WorldKidLit Wednesday: The Big Tournament

Posted on by Nanette McGuinness

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

#WorldKidLit Wednesday: Born a Girl: It Takes Courage

Posted on by Nanette McGuinness
a cluster of five girls of different ethnicities against a reddish-orange backgraound with green, purple, and orange leaves around them and white lettering for the title and subtitle in the upper left corner

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

#WorldKidLit Month 2025: ‘Moominvalley in November’

Posted on by kimbeeman

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’

#WorldKidLit Month 2025: The Quest for Legacy in ‘Finding the Way to Faraway Valley’ 

Posted on by kimbeeman

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’ 

#WorldKidLit Month 2025: The Moonwind Mysteries

Posted on by kimbeeman

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