Today’s post comes to you from Erin えりん The curation of reality through language in Rie Qudan’s "Sympathy Tower Tokyo" August 11 is Mountain Day (Yama no Hi) in Japan, celebrated annually in appreciation of the country's mountainous regions. The choice of date is related to the Kanji character for the number 8 (八), which visually … Continue reading #WITMonth: “Sympathy Tower Tokyo”
Today’s post comes to you from Nadine Bailey Ann-Helén Laestadius’s Punished is a profound, deeply unsettling exploration of systemic oppression, extinguishing of language, intergenerational trauma, and the enduring struggle to reclaim cultural identity. It is a narrative based on the author’s family story* that forces readers to confront a dark and often overlooked chapter of Scandinavian … Continue reading #WITMonth: “Punished”
First published in Singapore in 2021, the picture book Marvellous Mammals is now available worldwide and a valuable resource for learning about the geography and wildlife of Southeast Asia. Each letter in English corresponds to the name of a mammal that lives in the region (though the author is helped by the fact that the mammals go … Continue reading #WorldKidLit Wednesday: Marvellous Mammals
Today’s post comes to you from Nadine Bailey Won-Pyung Sohn’s Counterattacks at Thirty is a sharp, humane workplace comedy exploring systemic disillusionment. Informed by her background as an award-winning screenwriter, Sohn filters the crushing weight of modern corporate labor through traditional East Asian narrative structures, creating a story deeply specific to South Korea yet universally resonant. … Continue reading #WITMonth: Won-Pyung Sohn’s “Counterattacks at Thirty”
Today’s post comes to you from Beth Gourley Suite for Barbara Loden by Nathalie Léger. Translated from French by Natasha Lehrer and Cécile Menon. Cover illustration by Ruth Gwily. Originally published in France in 2012 as Supplément à la vie de Barbara Loden (P.O.L); English translation published by Les Fugitives (UK) and Dorothy, a publishing … Continue reading #WITMonth: In Conversation with “SUITE FOR BARBARA LODEN”
Today’s post comes to you from Angie Erickson Every August, Women in Translation Month asks us to notice which voices reach our shelves. It is also an opportunity to consider what we mean when we talk about women’s writing. In 2025, Yael van der Wouden won the Women’s Prize for Fiction for her extraordinary debut novel, … Continue reading #WITMonth: Welcome to the annual Women in Translation Month on GLLI
Eleven-year-old Genya lives in Kiev, USSR (now Kyiv, Ukraine) in 1986 with her mother, her mother’s boyfriend, and her three-year-old half-brother. Her mother is an animation artist, and Genya dreams of becoming an artist as well. But first she needs to pass a demanding week-long exam in July to get into the national Art School. … Continue reading #WorldKidLit Wednesday: Chernobyl, Life, and Other Disasters: A Graphic Memoir
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)
Global Literature in Libraries Initiative 