Posts Tagged foreign language books
Batchelder Book Talks
Here are the books the Bush Library has that have either won or been recognized by the Mildred L. Batchelder Award which honors children’s books that were first published in a foreign country in a foreign language and then translated into English and published in the United States.
2007 Winner. Originally published in France. Written by Jean-Claude Mourlevat and translated from the French by Y. Maudet.
This story is based on Charles Perrault’s fairy tale “Tom Thumb”. It’s about an extraordinary (and extraordinarily small) boy who has three sets of twin brothers and one set of cruel parents. Just because this book is about a tiny boy, don’t expect it to be cute or sweet. When Perrault was writing fairy tales in the 17th Century they usually included some serious tragedy. Mourlevat picks up on this tradition and modernizes it.
2006 Honoree. Originally published in France. Written by Valérie Zenatti and translated from the French by Adriana Hunter.
This is the autobiography of an Israeli girl (originally from France, hence the book is in French, not Hebrew) who joins the Israeli army at the age of 18. If you want to know what it’s like to be a soldier in the Middle East, you should check this out.
The Man Who Went to the Far Side of the Moon: The Story of Apollo 11 Astronaut Michael Collins
2004 Honoree. Originally published in Sweden. Written by Bea Uusma Schyffert and translated from Swedish by Emi Guner.
A pretty cool book of artifacts, trivia, and stories from the Apollo 11 mission to the Moon. The focus is on Michael Collins, who went up into space with Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong but had to stay in orbit while they went down to the moon’s surface. I really enjoyed some of the wackier anecdotes from the book. For example, when the astronauts discharged their urine into space it froze and crystalized which, according to Michael, made it look like Angels. Gross!
2003 Winner. Originally published in Germany. Written by Cornelia Funke and translated from German by Oliver Latsch.
Have you ever wanted to go to Italy? This book transports you there as it tells the story of two runaway brothers who join a gang of young thieves in Venice, the city of canals and gondolas. Kind of like Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist, only modern and Italian.
2002 Honoree. Originally published in France. Written by Susie Morgenstern with illustrations by Serge Bloch. Translated from the French by Gill Rosner.
Delightfully silly book about a new teacher in a French school. To be honest, I haven’t read it, but it looks like fun.
Anne Frank Beyond the Diary: A Photographic Remembrance
1994 Honoree. Originally published in the Netherlands. By Ruud van der Rol and Rian Verhoeven, in association with the Anne Frank House, translated from Dutch by Tony Langham and Plym Peters.
If you want to know more about Anne Frank this is a great book to pick up, especially if you’re a more visual person because it has a lot of photographs.
1986 Winner. Originally published in Switzerland. By Christophe Gallaz and Robert Innocenti and translated from the French by Martha Coventry & Richard Craglia. (The ALA website lists Rose Blanche as being translated from the Italian, probably because the illustrator who originally conceived of the book, Innocenti, is Italian; however Gallaz, the man who wrote the text, was Swiss and wrote in French.)
Beautifully illustrated, this is the story of a gentile girl who discovers a concentration camp near her home in Germany during World War II. It looks like a picture book for young kids, but the content is very serious and sad, so it’s best for mature readers who can handle stories about the Holocaust.
1983 Winner. Originally published in Japan. By Toshi Maruki and translated from Japanese through Kurita-Bando Literary Agency.
This picturebook tells the horrifying story of the day the United States attacked the city of Hiroshima with an atomic bomb. Like Rose Blanche above, this may appear to be for little kids, but the subject matter can be upsetting.
1 comment January 23, 2008
