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
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
Welcome back to #WorldKidLit month on GLLI. Today's post comes to us from Mairin Raisdana. Published in 2019 and translated in 2023, Roses and Violets is the first book in the Rosenholm fantasy trilogy by Danish author Gry Kappel Jensen, translated by Sharon E. Rhodes. The book is set in Rosewood Boarding School, a school … Continue reading #WorldKidLit Month 2025: Roses & Violets
Our next post is a conversation between educators about a specialized book club in Portland, Maine, USA. They discuss book club title selection, favorite international mysteries, and the problems with "translation" in a beloved series. Enjoy! - Rebecca Starr My name is Lynn Lawrence-Brown, and I am a Taiwanese-American teacher librarian working at Shrewsbury International … Continue reading #WITMONTH 2025: International Women of Mystery
Pseudotranslation is not a new literary form (Don Quixote, 1605/15, is a notable example), though the term itself is fairly young. One such current novel that’s popular in my library is translator Jennifer Croft’s 2024 mystery, The Extinction of Irena Rey. I very much hope that its readers will move on to Yáng Shuāng-Zǐ’s equally … Continue reading #WITMONTH 2025: Taiwan Travelogue
When I’m asked for books that are great introductions to the genre of speculative fiction, I often turn to Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler or The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin. Women have been writing - and continue to write - exceptional speculative fiction. Reading speculative fiction in translation is a fun … Continue reading #WITMONTH 2025: Speculative Fiction
If you’re looking for stories that blend horror, humor, and a dash of magic, you’ll find many appealing works by South Korean authors now in translation. One novel that is representative of this sub-genre is The Disaster Tourist, by Yun Ko-Eun. It was originally published in 2013, while the English translation (by Lizzie Buehler) was … Continue reading #WITMONTH 2025: Surreal Stories by South Korean Authors
A deliciously absurd grammatical romp of a picture book, ashimpa: the mysterious word begins when a researcher rediscovered a long-lost word that has resurfaced "by chance in a dusty old dictionary: ASHIMPA. Quickly, the news spread. Everyone wanted to use this exciting discovery—but no one knew exactly how. No one knew what the word meant, … Continue reading #WorldKidLit Wednesday: ashimpa: the mysterious word
A 2025 GLLI Translated Young Adult Book Prize Honor Book and the first fabulous volume in a sci-fi duology, Snowglobe is set in a post-apocalyptic, post-climate-change world. Life for the lower class is cold and brutal. Most labor daily to create electricity via giant human-powered hamster wheels, except for the lucky few who live in … Continue reading #WorldKidLit Wednesday: Snowglobe
Given that May is already underway, a better suited title for this blog would be "April's African Lit Afterparty." But, April's guest blogs warrant revisiting regardless the month! Many thanks to our guest bloggers, Bridget Pitt, Caroline Kurtz, and Bridget Krone, who shared books spanning diverse genres and settings in the African continent--from Ethiopian life-writing, … Continue reading #African Lit: April Round Up
Global Literature in Libraries Initiative 