Reading the World through Books for Young People: Europe

Every September is World Kid Lit Month: an annual celebration of international literature for young people. It's the perfect time to read beyond your borders, and to explore children’s books from other countries and translated from other languages. 

This month we’re taking a global tour of children’s and YA publishing with recommendations by SCBWI members. Today, we head to Europe! We’ll have a speedy whistle stop tour of the continent, followed by a longer linger in France, Italy and Portugal for our SCBWI members' picture book and middle grade tips.

Europe is a continent of hundreds of languages, and across the EU zone, a region of free movement for goods and people. But the availability of translation funding is not consistent across the continent, and this affects what is translated and its visibility. Despite the funding challenge, for almost every European country there has been at least one kid lit export in recent years. How do we know? Besides being a SCBWI member, I’m one of the team of volunteers at World Kid Lit, where we keep an annual list of children’s books and YA translated into English.

Let’s start in Scandinavia to see what the landscape is like with well-funded literature promotion agencies and a strong culture of literary agents. Norwegian, Danish, Swedish and Finnish translations are particularly well represented in middle grade and YA, a difficult sell to English-language publishers unless there’s a full or very lengthy sample translation – itself challenging without national translation funding. 

A few years old now, but one absolute must-read is The Murderer’s Ape from Sweden (Pushkin Press), a page-turning murder mystery that takes readers on a fabulous journey from Lisbon to Bombay. From Arctis, there have been several YA fantasies and thrillers such as Mats Strandberg’s The End. The brilliant Norwegian non-fiction graphic novel Smash the Patriarchy won last year’s GLLI Translated YA Book Prize. Scandinavian picture books famously deal with weighty topics for even the youngest readers; particularly recommended comes Batchelder Honor book Coffee, Rabbit, Snowdrop, Lost about dementia (Enchanted Lion).

Dutch and Flemish children’s books also punch above their weight, and translators such as Laura Watkinson and David Colmer translate a steady stream of classics. Bette Westera and Mattias de Leeuw’s picture book Later, When I’m Big (tr. Watkinson, Eerdmans) was also a Batchelder Honor title.

Translations from France account for around 200 of 1400 – or an astonishing 14% – of the translations for young people published in the last 8 years (N.B. we’re updating our list all the time at World Kid Lit; please let us know of any we’re missing!). Germany and Spain are close runners up with about 5% of the translated kid lit market share each. 

Another big hitter is Italy, worth a visit for Just A Girl, a tender story of a Jewish girl’s life under fascism in the 1930s, perfectly pitched for younger children (a Batchelder Award winner), and Glowrushes: a 1980s Italian gem brought to English by the hard work and determination of translator Leah Janeczko. 

Heading east to the Balkans and Greece, another recently reissued classic, from 1963, is The Wildcat Behind Glass, by Alki Zei and translated from Greek by Karen Emmerich (Restless Books). Central and Eastern Europe has given us many much-loved picture books, and Slovenian kid lit has been given a boost by the translations of Olivia Hellewell, including PEN-award winning Felix After the Rain. There has been a welcome flurry of translations from Ukraine recently, making up for too many years of nothing, including fabulous illustrated non-fiction from graphic artists Romana Romanyshyn and Andriy Lesiv, Oleksandr Shatokhin’s wordless beauty Yellow Butterfly, and the bilingual picture book series from UK independent Pineapple Lane. 

Finishing up this speedy tour in the Baltic states, definitely keep an eye out for Adam Cullen’s many translations of surreal Estonian kid lit, especially the marvelously relatable Oskar and the Things (The Emma Press). And head over to Jill! youtube channel to hear a lovely bilingual reading by translator Kotryna Garanasvili of Little Apples of Eden by Bite Vilimaite, a Lithuanian classic out now from Kurumuru Books. 

Now let’s linger a while in France, Italy and Portugal…

France

Harriet’s Reflections

written and illustrated by Marion Kadi, translated from French by Marion Kadi & Abram Kaplan 

Eerdmans Books for Young Readers, 2024

Recommended by Jackie Friedman Mighdoll (SCBWI San Francisco/South)

Jackie says ...

"When an old lion dies, his reflection gets bored and goes searching. He discovers Harriet who isn’t happy about going to school, jumps in a puddle, and becomes her reflection. Harriet, on seeing her new reflection, feels fierce and has a wonderful time at school playing, eating, growling, and napping. But the next day, when she gets into trouble for her actions, she starts to wonder: Is the lion really her or not? With illustrations as fiery, fun and reflective as the text, this is a colorful exploration of identity."

Italy

Ellie In First Position

by Brian Freschi, illustrated by Elena Triolo, translated from Italian by Nanette McGuinness

Recommended by Nanette McGuinness (SCBWI SF and East Bay)

Nanette says ...

"A graphic novel for middle grade readers, ELLIE IN FIRST POSITION is a funny, positive story about persistence, self-love, moving, bullying and friendship. After her parents’ divorce, Ellie’s mom moves the family to a new town. Her mom wants her to make friends by joining a team... except Ellie is atrocious at sports. Plus she keeps getting bullied at her new school. One night, Ellie goes to the ballet. Enchanted, she realizes that she wants to dance more than anything else. But her mom doesn’t approve.  By the end of the book Ellie not only learns to dance but also makes new friends, has her first crush, and manages to deal with her bullies too.”

Portugal

Calvin and the Sugar Apples 

by Iñes F. Oliveira, illustrated by Vanessa Balleza

Published by The Collective Book Studio, 2023

Recommended by Gloria Amescua (SCBWI Austin, Texas) and Amanda Davis (SCBWI New England)

Gloria says …

“I’m recommending Calvin and the Sugar Apples by Iñes F. Oliveira set in Portugal where she lives. I’m so glad a friend recommended it. This book is beautifully written with an emotional and poetic feel that’s perfect for middle grade kids.

“Amelia confides everything to her pet chinchilla, Calvin. After Calvin disappears, Amelia doesn’t want to accept that loss.  Finally, she talks about her sadness. Calvin always listened and loved her, but her family and friends do, too.

“Middle grade kids are often dealing with their big feelings about friendships, confidence, worthiness, loneliness and sadness. This story weaves all these feelings in a compelling story. It will capture their hearts as it did mine. I’m looking forward to Oliveira’s future books.”

Amanda says …

“Often a child's first experience with death is with a beloved pet and in this sweet story, readers get to journey with ten- year-old Amelia as she processes the loss of her pet chinchilla, Calvin. How will she navigate life without her best friend? Told in a lyrical voice with bits of humor and lots of heart, Oliveira makes the essential topic of grief and death accessible to young readers while giving a glimpse into the beauty of the Portuguese landscape and exploring the promise of friendship and new beginnings.”    

***

Gloria Amescua’s picture book biography, Child of the Flower-Song People: Luz Jiménez, Daughter of the Nahua, received a Pura Belpré Author Honor Award, ILA Awards, SCBWI Golden Kite finalist, RISE Top Ten Feminist Book Project, and co-winner of the Américas Award.

Amanda Davis is a teacher, artist, writer, and innovator who uses her words and pictures to light up the world with kindness.

Eisner-nominated, Harvey-winning translator, opera singer and podcast host Nanette McGuinness has translated over 100 books and graphic novels for children and adults from French, Italian, German and Spanish into English. 

Jackie Friedman Mighdoll is a writer, educator, translator and entrepreneur. She is passionate about nurturing the next generation of global citizens. She currently serves on the board of World Kid Lit and on the steering committee of SCBWI’s Impact and Legacy Fund.

Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp is an Arabic teacher and a literary translator working from Arabic, Russian and German into English. She gives workshops in schools about reading the world and creative translation, and is managing director of World Kid Lit CIC, the hosts of World Kid Lit Month.

SCBWI Joins the Offense Against Book Bans: WE ARE STRONGER THAN CENSORSHIP

Check out the logo -
the "O" of Censorship is a 'do not enter' sign opening up into a book being read!

Wouldn't it be great if there were a way to put the brakes on the runaway train of book banning?

Efforts to restrict the availability of books featuring Black, Queer, and other under-represented characters, themes, and history are at an all-time high. What isn’t widely known about book bans is the impact of the chilling effect, where librarians and teachers have to worry about bringing in any diverse titles even when they know the books would help their students/patrons. 

In turn, the chilling effect disproportionally impacts independent presses, many of whom are mission driven and focus on publishing voices from the very communities who are targeted by the current politically motivated runaway train of book banning. The drop in sales to schools and libraries for many of these publishers has been significant, and this impacts authors both financially and emotionally. Most of all, book banning hurts kids – further marginalizing those with less privilege, access, and representation.

In response to all this, the Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA) and EveryLibrary Institute have teamed up to spread light and inclusive books to readers in communities across the US impacted by the chilling effect of book bans. For every book banned or challenged between September 1 and September 30, 2024, WE ARE STRONGER THAN CENSORSHIP will buy two or more books from independent publishers and donate them via regional freedom to read organizations and national partners  – turning negativity and fear into positivity and love... in the form of books! 

SCBWI has partnered with WE ARE STRONGER THAN CENSORSHIP to help both spread the word and connect the program to local organizations that are looking to give diverse books directly to families who can't afford them otherwise.

You can help! 

Every $16 donated buys two books to offset one book challenge.

Some of the many merch options -
each includes a $16 donation to buy two books to offset one book challenge!

And if you buy a STRONG LIKE AN AUTHOR, STRONG LIKE AN ILLUSTRATOR, STRONG LIKE A TRANSLATOR, STRONG LIKE A READER T-shirt or other merch, each purchase includes a $16 donation to buy two books to offset one book challenge.

You can learn more about how the WE ARE STRONGER THAN CENSORSHIP program works here.

And there are lots more ways to help - many of them free - here.

Illustrate, Translate, and Write On,
Lee

Reading the World through Books for Young People: Africa

Every September is World Kid Lit Month: the ideal time to read beyond your borders, and explore children’s books from other countries and translated from other languages.

This month I’ll be joined by SCBWI members from chapters worldwide, recommending books from every corner of the globe.

Today we start with two picture books from Nigeria and Ghana, and a YA novel set in Zimbabwe.

One of the most compelling reasons, I think, to embark on a #ReadtheWorld project is that it helps us reveal our own biases in the books we tend to gravitate to. And when we start looking for books from specific countries, we start to see the structural biases and gaps in terms of what is published.

It’s easy enough to find children’s books set in African countries; harder to find ones - in the UK and US, at least - that are from African countries, or translated from editions first published on the African continent.

What does this mean for translator members of SCBWI? That there is so much untapped potential in terms of children’s books to translate and help export to the world. At World Kid Lit, we keep data on what is translated into English and while we’re conscious there must be many more translations than we know about, the number of translations from African languages remains frustratingly small. 

Some recent highlights in translation include YA and graphic novels from South Africa. New this year is The Girl with Wings by Jaco Jacobs, illustrated by Tori Stowe, translated by Kobus Geldenhuys; Jacobs’ zombie-filled middle grade stories were fantastic, so I’m sure this is worth seeking out, too. 

In recent years, publishers have been branching out with Francophone picture books from beyond Europe, e.g. A Dream of Birds by Shenaz Patel, illustrated by Emmanuelle Tchoukriel, translated by Edwige-Renée Dro. The original French edition was published in Mauritius. And Eerdmans published an in-house translation of The Gift by Cameroonian author Alain Serge Dzotap, illustrated by Dephine Renon.

At SCBWI and at World Kid Lit, we encourage translators of languages spoken and published on the continent to seek out opportunities to translate as yet untranslated African kid lit authors. There’s so much potential for collaborations between translators. 

At World Kid Lit, we help connect publishers with country and language experts, and we’re always keen to hear from translators with a particular expertise or connection to a specific country. A good place to start for translators keen to work more on African kid lit is our World Kid Lit LIVE discussion about African Kid Lit and Africa’s Many Languages. You could also explore the many reviews of books we’ve featured so far on the blog (#Reading Africa).

A few publishers in the US who have released African kid lit recently (in translation and in English) include Amazon Crossing and independents Lee and Low, Eerdmans, and Catalyst Press, and, in the UK, Lantana, Oneworld, HopeRoad, and Neem Tree Press (including the first YA novel from Algeria to be translated, The Djinn’s Apple by Djamila Morani, translated from Arabic by Sawad Hussain). 

The following books were written in English and explore themes as diverse as mental health, children's experience of war, and (dis)ability. 

Which children's books have you read from Africa? What will you read this September?

Nigeria

What Happened on Thursday? 

by Ayo Oyeku and Lydia Mba, published by Amazon Crossing, out on 17 September 2024

Recommended by Johanna McCalmont, SCBWI Benelux member

Set in 1967-1970, What Happened on Thursday? is a picture book narrated from the perspective of a young boy forced to flee the Nigerian civil war in Biafra with his parents and younger sister. Writing about war is not an easy task, but Ayo Oyeku finds a balance between everyday details that stand out to a child, like bread for breakfast, and the larger traumas of war time, like life in a refugee camp. Lydia Mba’s sharp illustrations use both vibrant and dark palettes, capturing the range of emotions and echoing Oyeku’s succinct yet often poetic text. The book includes useful notes and discussion questions.

Ghana

Emmanuel's Dream: The True Story of Emmanuel Ofosu Yeboah 

by Laurie Ann Thompson and Sean Qualls, published by Anne Schwartz Books, 2015

Recommended by Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp, SCBWI British Isles member

The perfect read during the Paris 2024 Paralympics! This is the inspiring story of Emmanuel Ofosu Yeboah, a Ghanaian athlete and disability rights activist, who became Ghana’s first disabled cyclist, pedalling the length and breadth of his country proudly wearing the label ‘Pozo’ (disabled person) on his shirt to show there’s no limit to what a person can do. The author’s note in the backmatter explains how Yeboah’s activism and the awareness he raised through his incredible bike ride of nearly 400 miles across Ghana - in just 10 days - contributed to the Ghanaian Parliament passing an equality law enshrining the equal rights of disabled citizens. 

Zimbabwe

My Totem Came Calling 

by Blessing Musariri and Thorten Nesch, published by Mawenzi House, 2019

Recommended by Suzanne Kamata, SCBWI Japan member

This young adult novel is set in Zimbabwe and concerns a seventeen-year-old named Chanda, who believes that she is seeing things (namely, a zebra, her totem animal). She goes on a road trip with friends and meets a German guy named Sven. As an American, I found the teens highly relatable. Often humorous, the novel nevertheless deals with serious issues such as mental illness.

Want to read more African kid lit and YA? 

Here are some recommended resources and websites to help you discover more authors to read, or perhaps translate …

• Accord Literary: literary agents Sarah Odedina and Kunmi Odueke representing authors based in Africa writing books for young readers; interview at World Kid Lit

• Akada Children’s Book Festival

• Children’s Africana Book Awards (CABA)

• Global Literature in Libraries Initiative (GLLI): #AfricanLiterature

• Our Ancestories: children’s books about pre-colonial African legends and activities for kids to explore specific African cultures

• Reading Africa Week (every December); at World Kid Lit

• Van Aggelen – African Literary Agency

Suzanne Kamata is an American permanent resident of Japan, and the author of the young adult novel Indigo Girl (GemmaMedia, 2019) and the middle grade novel Pop Flies, Robo-pets and Other Stories (One Elm Books, 2020), both set in Japan.

Johanna McCalmont is originally from Northern Ireland but now lives in Brussels, Belgium, where she translates from French, German, Dutch, and Italian. Her translations have been published by Blue Dot Kids Press, Arctis Books, NorthSouth, and IUP. She also works as an interpreter. She is co-editor of World Kid Lit blog.

Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp is an Arabic teacher and a literary translator working from Arabic, Russian and German into English. Her published translations include fiction, nonfiction and children’s books from Germany, Jordan, Morocco, Palestine, Russia, Switzerland and Syria. She gives workshops in schools about reading the world and creative translation, and is managing director of World Kid Lit CIC, the hosts of World Kid Lit Month.

NaNoWriMo and AI

Nonprofits are often reliant on sponsors to help fund things that are part of the nonprofit's mission. Sometimes, the sponsor wants the nonprofit's audience, but there's a real or perceived disconnect in what the sponsor actually does and the health/welfare of the nonprofit's audience.

Such is the case with the current heat regarding National Novel Writing Month's position on AI and having AI sponsorship. 

Matthew Dow Smith posted on Bluesky:

I understand why an "AI" "writing" app would want to sponsor a writing event, but for the life of me, I can not understand why any event based around actual writing would accept the sponsorship of an "AI" company.

screenshot of NaNoWriMo's position on AI, taken Sep 2, 2024

On Sep 2, 2024 NaNoWriMo edited their "Position on AI" to include this:

we have edited this post by adding this paragraph to reflect our acknowledgment that there are bad actors in the AI space who are doing harm to writers and who are acting unethically. We want to make clear that, though we find the categorical condemnation for AI to be problematic for the reasons stated below, we are troubled by situational abuse of AI, and that certain situational abuses clearly conflict with our values. We also want to make clear that AI is a large umbrella technology and that the size and complexity of that category (which includes both non-generative and generative AI, among other uses) contributes to our belief that it is simply too big to categorically endorse or not endorse. 

We believe that to categorically condemn AI would be to ignore classist and ableist issues surrounding the use of the technology, and that questions around the use of AI tie to questions around privilege. 

At issue is the unlicensed scraping/stealing of the copyrighted work of writers (and other creatives) that the large AI programs have done to enable them to "generate" text -- though, as I've written before, I think that's a misnomer, and we should use "regurgitate" to better describe what they're actually doing.

Here's an April 2023 example of how NaNoWriMo is suggesting folks might use AI to help with their writing (see point 3).

Another post on Bluesky, by Becky & Frank:

The NaNoWriMo AI statement stings. I’ve been working as a writer for over a decade and have never completed that challenge. Writing is hard work and what I have to fight daily to do my job often feels insurmountable. Stealing the hard fought words of others to complete your stories is sick and sad.

One of the challenges of social media is that often it's a place of heat and not light. But one of the cool things is that it lets you know when something's happening, and you get to figure out how you feel about it.

Final thought on this to share from Bluesky is from Sarah Guillory:

I’m a runner. I love what it does for my mind, body, & soul. So people who fake running (who hire people to run logged into their Strava account) baffle me. What is the purpose? The same is true for using AI. Why pretend you are a writer when you are not writing? The creative process is the point.

What's your take? Is there a % of AI assistance that's feels right for you?

Illustrate, Translate, and Write On,
Lee