AI, World Kid Lit Month, and #scbwiSummer25

Happy World Kid Lit Month! Since 2016, September has been a time of highlighting international children’s and young adult literature. It's a terrific month to read a book authored outside your country and share it with a young person—and, if you like, on social media!

An array of reading suggestions can be found at WorldKidLit.org, together with a brand-new reading challenge program for schools, media assets, interviews, and background information.

A hot topic this World Kid Lit Month is AI. Many global reads for children are translations, and concerns are rising that AI may be perceived as an acceptable alternative to human translators. As one such translator, I say nay!

But you don’t have to take my word for it. To explore what translators do for young readers that bots cannot, you can go right to the SCBWI Virtual Summer Conference 2025 session replays. Registration remains open through September 9, affording access to replays of nearly fifty sessions.

One is a twenty-minute interview with Claire Storey, who explores the role of translators as book “scouts,” bringing titles deserving of translation to the attention of the right publishers. Claire describes how in-person networking, including at the London Book Fair and the Bologna Children’s Book Fair, has been key to pitching books that she has gone on to translate. One work that she pitched and translated won the 2025 Global Literature in Libraries Initiative Translated YA Book Prize!

Claire Storey holding printed materials she hands out at book fairs

Human translators connecting at the #scbwiSummer25 Translators' Social

Another rich offering is Lawrence Schimel’s breakout session on translation of books for different age groups. Lawrence’s philosophy as a translator is “always to recreate the reading experience," which means making moves AI never could, in order to take readers on a particular emotional journey. (AI, lest we forget, cannot feel.) Translating might include reworking humor that does not land in a new language, reinventing wordplay or rhyme, or even making wholesale changes to poetic structure—all for the sake of fidelity to how the source text moves readers. Lawrence describes taking weeks to complete a board book translation of less than 100 words. Don’t you want to read that book?

Lawrence speaking from Madrid

The opening keynote features Soman Chainani discussing how important it is, in the age of AI, for kidlit makers to share the human side of their creative process. This point reminds me of how author-illustrator Debbie Ridpath Ohi took time at a book signing to make a short video for my students, showing how she had included items of personal significance in the art for I Want to Read All the Books. (Debbie accepts the 2025 Stephen Mooser Member of the Year Award at the #scbwiSummer25 closing session!)

I saved a screenshot from the editorial phase of my latest translation, The Village Beyond the Mist by Sachiko Kashiwaba, to show that many humans also come together to polish the final text of a book.

Portion of The Village Beyond the Mist with changes by two editors, a proofreader, and myself

Collaborative revision is yet another aspect of kidlit that is beyond AI—as is hitting the road with an author to launch a translation. For more on that subject, see my post next Thursday!

Avery Fischer Udagawa’s translations include the 2022 Batchelder Award-winning novel Temple Alley Summer, the 2024 Batchelder Honor book The House of the Lost on the Cape, and new release The Village Beyond the Mist, all authored in Japanese by Sachiko Kashiwaba. Avery works in international education north of Bangkok and volunteers as SCBWI Global Translator Coordinator.