When Annick, an older teenager living in Amsterdam, learns that the grandmother who has raised her ever since her parents’ death in an accident, needs a bone marrow transplant, it leads her on a journey that will take her across oceans and continents, and almost 70 years into the past. Searching for a perfect match, … Continue reading #WorldKidLit Wednesday: Song of a Blackbird
Last week the American Library Association (ALA) presented their annual Youth Media Awards, celebrating the best in literature for young people. Among major awards such as the Caldecott and the Newbery medals, there is also the Mildred L. Batchelder Award, given to an outstanding "children’s book originally published in a language other than English in … Continue reading #WorldKidLit Wednesday: Just a Girl: A True Story of World War II
Writing fiction about music can be tricky. Music is sound in time; it speaks to our brains at a pre-verbal level. As a result, using words to describe music can be hard and the literature is littered with near-misses. So it’s a great pleasure as a musician to read a well-written novel centered around music … Continue reading #WorldKidLit Wednesday: Wonderful Feels Like This
“Many years ago,in a faraway land called Holland, in a city named Delft, I was Fred’s teddy bear. I never had a name. Fred never gave me one. I lived in his bedroom with other toys. I was a happy bear. Little Fred loved me more than any other toy. He took me everywhere he … Continue reading #WorldKidLitWednesday: Bear and Fred: A World War II Story
Mysterious and melancholy, The Book of Pearl consists of two complex, interwoven strands. One is historical fiction, the other is pure faerie fantasy, and both are the story of Joshua Iliån Pearl. Framing these two strands is the story of a young photographer/narrator who first appears as a teen and whose intervention many years later … Continue reading #WorldKidLitWednesday: The Book of Pearl
Very few people have heard of Francesco Tirelli, one of the multitude of unsung heroes and heroines of World War II. Nor have they heard about how this Italian gelato aficionado emigrated to Hungary, opened a successful ice cream parlor in the middle of Budapest, and, years later, quietly saved many of his Jewish friends … Continue reading #WorldKidLitWednesday: Francesco Tirelli's Ice Cream Shop
Who is Mister Orange? And why is this quiet, moving book named after him? Written by award-winning Dutch author and editor, Truus Matti, and beautifully translated by another award-winner, Laura Watkinson, Mister Orange won the Netherlands' 2012 Silver Slate Pencil Award and the American Library Associations's 2014 Mildred L. Batchelder Award. The story begins in … Continue reading #WorldKidLit Wednesday: Mister Orange
Global Literature in Libraries Initiative 