Scope
This site strives to give librarians the basic tools to build a global youth literature collection in order to better serve local communities. The Starter Kit consists of curated book lists – mostly contemporary books plus a few classics – along with Programming Tips on how to use them. The Hub resources will help you deepen your understanding of international youth literature and awareness of the field. The site is not meant to be comprehensive, but to get you started and provide lots of possibilities for deeper exploration. It’s a one-stop shop for bringing international diversity to your collection!
Our Starter Kit consists mainly of print books, but in some cases we have included ebooks when that is the only format available. All titles were available and in-print when posted. If you discover that a book is no longer available, please let us know by using the feedback form.
For this first phase of the project we chose to focus on children’s book translations from other countries, so the site is organized geographically. We began the project targeting those regions and countries from which it is most difficult to find and acquire translations. This is why we have curated book lists from Latin America (in both Spanish and Portuguese), the Middle East and North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, India, China and Taiwan, Japan, and Korea rather than Western European countries such as France and Germany whose languages are more frequently translated and whose books are more widely available in the US.
For the most part these are books first published in a language other than English. But in some countries – for example, India and many African countries – English, too, is a local language. So you will find that some of our books from abroad were first published in English.
For this phase of the project we limited our selections to books for children: picture books and middle grade.
Picture books refers to the format, not the content, but many of these books are aimed at young children, roughly 0-7 years old.
Middle grade includes early chapter books and is for an audience from about 6-12 years of age.
Young adult overlaps somewhat with middle grade and is aimed at an age range of about 11-18 years old.
Each annotation includes the target audience age. Of course age ranges are a rough guide and it’s important to keep the individual reader in mind. In some countries what we would consider middle grade is called young adult or, conversely, what we think of as YA would be published as middle grade. The annotations address this issue.
For an excellent – and growing – selection of international young adult translations, we refer you to the Global Literature in Libraries Initiative (GLLI) Translated YA Book Prize.
For the next phase of the project we plan to provide young adult books for the regions and countries currently listed, expand our coverage of regions and countries, and provide book lists in world languages.
Search
There are two kinds of searches. You can do a keyword search of the site or a tag search using the search box on the top right-hand corner of your screen. We encourage you to do both. Here’s how:
Keyword search
Type in your search term. You will be searching throughout the site – both the Starter Kit book lists and Hub resources. It’s a simple keyword or phrase search – there are no Boolean “and” or “or” operators.
Sample keyword search: You would like to find a few recommendations for books by authors and illustrators who have won or been shortlisted for the Hans Christian Andersen Award. You can go to the Hub: Prizes section and look up the award and see the list of all the winners, but you’ll have to go through them individually. Or you can do a keyword search for Andersen, which will catch all the annotations in which Andersen authors, illustrators, and translators are mentioned, giving you some specific titles. Click on each gray box, which will take you to the page for your hit(s). This search will also bring up the Hans Christian Andersen Museum in Odense, where you can dip into a virtual exhibit of his papercuts, etc. – nothing to do with your search, but an enjoyable digression!
Tag search
All of the annotations for the Starter Kit book lists are tagged; when you search by tag you will pull up every instance of the tag in the book lists.
For details about tag construction, click to expand.
- Each book is tagged by:
- Format (Picture Books, Graphic Novels, Early Chapter Books, etc).
- Language if not originally in English.
- If a translation, the language from which its has been translated into English (Translations – Spanish).
- Country of publication (First Published – Oman).
- Country of setting, if applicable – especially useful when the book is published in one country but set in another (Setting – Syria).
- Country of author and illustrator (Authors – Lebanon; Illustrators – Korea) – you will often find international collaborations in these books. We provide a tag for the home country and the country with which the author or illustrator is most closely identified, if they are different. Example: Horacio Quiroga was born in Uruguay but he lived and worked in Argentina, so you can find him under both countries (Authors – Uruguay; Authors – Argentina).
- Subject/genre (Brothers and Sisters, Time Travel, etc)
You can scroll through the tags – you’ll see the list as soon as you click inside the search box – or start typing to see if there is a tag for your search term.
Sample tag search: You would like to find books that describe different types of experiences, both happy and sad. Want to put together a list of books that center refugees? Start typing in the tag search box and you’ll see the tag, Refugees. Or try War which will bring up several tags that include the word “war.” But also check out tags like Grandparent and Child, where you can pull together a few books about this often intimate relationship. Or Imagination, which will give you books that cut across different regions and countries of the world.
Save your hits: “My List”
When you find a book entry that you would like to save, click on the “Add to My List” box below the entry. Once you are ready to collect your list, go to “My List” on the menu bar to print your list, which will consist of the bibliographical information without the annotation. The search will not be saved once you leave the site, so make sure to print your hits!