Review by Tânia Cerqueira Please note: I am a non-Indigenous reader who grew up in Portugal, a country known for its colonial exploitation and genocide. Funeral Songs for Dying Girls by Cherie Dimaline (author of The Marrow Thieves [2017] and its sequel, Hunting by Stars [2021]) is a poignant and beautifully written story that explores the … Continue reading #IntlYALitMonth Review: Funeral Songs for Dying Girls
#IntlYALitMonth Review: Sweet Bean Paste
Review by Luke Tillier Sweet Bean Paste by Durian Sukegawa is a wonderful and contemplative story, providing the reader with a rich group of characters who form deep and meaningful friendships across the course of the story. The use of language by Sukegawa and Alison Watts (translator) is beautiful, and the description of the taste … Continue reading #IntlYALitMonth Review: Sweet Bean Paste
#IntlYALitMonth Review: The Merciless Ones
Review by Abigail Lee Namina Forna's The Merciless Ones picks up six months after the gripping conclusion of the first book, The Gilded Ones, where we join Deka as she continues on her mission to reinstate the four mother goddesses to their rightful positions of power. Despite their earlier victories, the battle against the oppressive … Continue reading #IntlYALitMonth Review: The Merciless Ones
#IntlYALitMonth Spotlight: The Association for Children’s Literature in South Asia
A fledgling group with big dreams, The Association for Children’s Literature in South Asia (ACLiSA) was created in 2020 by a group of five children’s literature scholars from India. It started out as a Facebook group for sharing information in children’s literature studies before launching as a website aclisa.in in 2021, with the intention to … Continue reading #IntlYALitMonth Spotlight: The Association for Children’s Literature in South Asia
#IntlYALitMonth Review: Who Owns the Clouds?
Review by Jelena Pataki Šumiga Who Owns the Clouds is a graphic novel for young readers, written by Mario Brassard, illustrated by Gérard Dubois, and translated by Yvette Ghione. Replete with dark colours interspersed at times with flashes of red, the illustrations depict the topic and the psychological state of its protagonist, Mila, even before … Continue reading #IntlYALitMonth Review: Who Owns the Clouds?
#IntlYALitMonth Review: Inkheart
Review by Dainy Bernstein Most booklovers have sometimes wished they could meet the characters they read about. But for Meggie, who gets to experience book characters coming to life, that wish becomes more of a nightmare than a dream come true. Her father, Mo, accidentally learns that he can bring characters to life when he … Continue reading #IntlYALitMonth Review: Inkheart
#IntlYALitMonth Review: Thunderbird
Review by Belle Nickols Sonia Nimr writes of the phoenix, or thunderbird, as a mythological creature deeply connected to the history of the Palestinian people. Nimr, born in the West Bank in 1955, developed an interest in writing children’s literature whilst in Israeli prison in the 1970s, following her involvement with the Palestinian liberation movement. … Continue reading #IntlYALitMonth Review: Thunderbird
#IntlYALitMonth Review: Yoghurt and Jam: Or how my mother became Lebanese
Review by Susanne Abou Ghaida Note: This review is based on the French translation of this graphic memoir; all translations from French are mine. An English version, translated from Arabic by Nadiyah Abdullatif and Anam Zafar, was published by Balestier Press in 2023 under the title Yoghurt and Jam (or How My Mother Became Lebanese). … Continue reading #IntlYALitMonth Review: Yoghurt and Jam: Or how my mother became Lebanese
#IntlYALitMonth Review: The Days of Bluegrass Love
Review by Abby Muth “I found myself yearning for a book that gave a visceral, first-person account of a love sparking between two boys. Until that point, the queer books I’d read—if I could even find any—had mostly been tragic: death and heartbreak were never far away. Now I wanted to write the kind of … Continue reading #IntlYALitMonth Review: The Days of Bluegrass Love
#IntlYALitMonth Spotlight: Spinning Gold
This post has been written by Jenny Barker, Editor-in-Chief of Spinning Gold, a student-led children's and YA literature journal at Goldsmiths, University of London. Illustration by Zoe Xu @zoelovesgiraffe With three pathways – Theoretical Approaches, Creative Writing, and Children’s Illustration - the MA Children’s Literature at Goldsmiths, University of London caters to a plethora of … Continue reading #IntlYALitMonth Spotlight: Spinning Gold
Global Literature in Libraries Initiative 