Laura Watkinson (translator)

“It’s a great book. It’s a very traditional book, but it does what it does incredibly well. I’ve told this story before, but when I had the book in page proof, I was reading it to my children. My son, aged eight, actually snuck into our bedroom at four in the morning to take the bound proofs, because we still had 150 pages to go and he wanted to know what happened next. This was before publication and I knew then that I was onto a winner.” Read more...

The Best Kids’ Books in Translation

Adam Freudenheim, Publisher

“Set in the Netherlands during World War II, it’s about a young boy and the things he gets up to during the German occupation. Jan Terlouw, now in his 80s, based it partly on his own experiences, but the book has all the nice plot twists you expect from fiction. Also, as a children’s book written nearly half a century ago about a period of Dutch history that the country still struggles to come to terms with, I thought it might be a bit black-and-white: but it actually isn’t.” Read more...

Editors’ Picks: Children’s Books

Sophie Roell, Journalist