Today’s post comes to you from Alison Fincher: Go and The Color of the Sky Is the Shape of the Heart were not necessarily written for a young adult audience. In fact, Go won Japan’s top award for popular fiction for adults, the Naoki Prize, and The Color of the Sky was short-listed for Japan’s … Continue reading #WorldKidLit Month: Asking “Who Am I?” in Two Novels about Japanese Young Adults
Today's post comes to you from Holly Thompson: The Deer King Vol. 1 Survivors; The Deer King Vol. 2 Returners by Nahoko Uehashi / Translated by Cathy Hirano; cover art by Masaaki Yamamoto; map art by Yui Ohara (Yen Press 2023; 2024) Author Nahoko Uehashi is a giant in Japanese young adult fantasy literature. A … Continue reading #WorldKidLit Month: Two Riveting Duologies from East Asia
Today’s post comes to you from Wendy Uchimura: On Your Mark…Get Set… Haikyu!! by Haruichi Furudate / Translated from the Japanese by Adrienne Beck (VIZ Media, 2016) With any kind of competition, it’s good to start with a warm-up. Manga has rules of its own, both with the style of reading and the visual cues, … Continue reading #WorldKidLit Month: A Winning Team—Manga and Novels of Competition
As I draft this post, it's late July and that wonderful annual event known as San Diego Comic-Con has just ended its 2026 installment. For some, Comic-Con is a public arena for joyous cosplay, for others it's an opportunity to watch said cosplay with delight, camera in hand; for some it's a place to buy … Continue reading #WorldKidLit Wednesday: The 2026 Eisner Awards
“Papa painted a thousand birds…because the world was falling apart.” So begins this memoir for teen and adult readers by the father-daughter team of Ahmadjan and Maren Amini. Maren grew up in Germany amid her father’s art and stories of his native Afghanistan. The son of farmers from the Panjshir Valley of northern Afghanistan, Ahmadjan … Continue reading #WorldKidLit Wednesday: Papa Drew a Thousand Birds
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
Whether it's your cup of tea or not, horror is having a moment. While not generally considered a horror story per se, Dante's Inferno is, in fact, one of the early masterpieces of the genre, right up there with the much older Greek myth of Oedipus Rex and the more recent Frankenstein and The Tell-Tale … Continue reading #WorldKidLit Wednesday: Dante’s Inferno: A Graphic Novel Adaptation
An explosion and traffic crash involving a truck filled with pigs on their way to the slaughterhouse leads to unexpected fame and terror for a teenage band in Rosario, Argentina in 1976. Sixteen-year-old Daniel Aguirre and his 15-year-old brother Adrián write a song from the perspective of pigs who end up in the neighborhood’s cooking … Continue reading #WorldKidLit Wednesday: Hear Ye Mortals
This is the 8th year of the GLLI Translated YA Book Prize, which recognizes publishers, translators, and authors of books in English translation for young adult readers, aged 12 through 18 inclusive. (See the prize criteria here and submission guidelines here.) Twenty-two books in eight languages, published within the past three years, were submitted for this cycle and a … Continue reading Congratulations to the 2026 GLLI Translated Young Adult Book Prize Winner & Honor Books (& Wrap-up to #IntlYALitMonth)
Today’s post comes to you from Tim Pruzinsky More Than Monsters Beasts – by Ingvild Bjerkeland / Translated from Norwegian by Rosie Hedger (Levine Querido/2025) – NORWAY Beasts was unanimously shortlisted by the Global Literature in Libraries Initiative YA Translated Book Prize committee. Its propulsive pacing and highly engaging reader experience made it a no-brainer for recognition. Coming … Continue reading #IntYALitMonth: GLLI 2026 Shortlist: Beasts
