#RivetingReviews: Picture books from Europe for World Kid Lit Month
It’s September and that means … World Kid Lit Month! The time to go global with our reading, and think about broadening horizons in terms of the books we make available to young people. So, whether you’re reading for yourself, seeking out new books for family members, or looking to diversify your library or classroom bookshelves, here are our autumn highlights in translation from Czech, Dutch and Portuguese.
MUSHROOMS AND COMPANY: HOW A MARVELOUSLY MOLDY NETWORK SUPPORTS LIFE ON EARTH
by Geert-Jan Roebers, illustrated by Wendy Panders
translated from Dutch (Netherlands) by Michele Hutchison
Published by Greystone Books (2025)
With gnomes as our guides, Mushrooms and Company takes readers on a journey through the world of fungi, a much larger and more intricate world than I realised.
Every day, like it or not, our lives are shaped by fungi. These single- and multi-celled organisms with their long scientific names help the plants we rely on for oxygen and food, are in the medicines we take, invade our food supplies, live in our bathrooms, and so much more.
Mushrooms and Company uses a mix of conversational text, deftly drawn illustrations, diagrams, and labelled, full-colour photographs to take us through the life cycle of fungi, how a fungus lives underground, the evolution of the fungi kingdom (they were once thought to be plants), and finally on to how plant and animal life on earth relies on fungus. There’s also back matter that encourages readers to get out and have real-life experiences with the fungi nearby.
Reviewed by Lori Sieling
PEOPLE ARE WEIRD
by Victor D. O. Santos, illustrated by Catarina Sobral
Published by Milky Way Picture Books (2025)
The main character, a child, goes through their day noticing people everywhere who seem ‘weird’ to them. Most are weird for the apparent contradictions in their behaviour – either in the mind of the protagonist or according to what they have been told by adults. For example, a neighbour keeps up his yard so people won’t talk about him, but a perfect lawn would certainly become a topic of conversation, wouldn’t it? The school librarian says knowledge from reading is power, so what about the homeless man in a station who always has his nose in a book? Each page offers a digestible nugget for the reader to consider and make their own decision. The illustrations are full of details that are thoroughly entertaining while keeping the focus on ‘what exactly is weird?’
Reviewed by Deborah Iwabuchi
OUR INCREDIBLE IMAGINATION
by Helena Haraštová, illustrated by Dita Vopřadová
Translated by Andrew Oakland
Published by Albotros (2025)
This book offers the nuts and bolts of how the imagination works. The content is aimed at upper-grade readers, but has an array of devices that – especially if read aloud by an adult – make the topic accessible for even the youngest readers. Each page is full of illustrations that accurately and entertainingly describe the text. Titles and subheadings are large and in bold, and detailed content is broken into short paragraphs. Important concepts are in bold, and most paragraphs have their own illustration. One could argue that children don’t need instruction to use their imaginations, but hopefully readers will see themselves somewhere on these engrossing pages, appreciate what they are capable of, and even think about trying out some new sort of imaginative activity.
Reviewed by Deborah Iwabuchi
ASHIMPA: THE MYSTERIOUS WORD
Written and illustrated by Catarina Sobral
Translated from Portuguese by Julianna Barbassa
Published by Transit Children’s Editions (2025)
A deliciously absurd grammatical romp of a picture book, Ashimpa: the Mysterious Word begins when a researcher rediscovers a long-lost word that has resurfaced ‘by chance in a dusty old dictionary: ASHIMPA.’ A visit to 137-year-old Mrs Zulmira sets everyone straight: it’s the verb, ‘to ashimp’. And, according to her, folks ‘ashimped, had always ashimped, in fact, and would ashimp on forever’.
Linguistic silliness continues in this enjoyable vein, with the new-old word morphing from verb to adjective to adverb, until the researcher announces that ‘ashimpa’ is … a ‘perlimpent!’ Nobody knows what that is, either.
Children love to play with language. Hence the premise of this zany picture book will tickle many young readers’ linguistic imaginations, and the casual references to parts of speech can easily lead to a delightful discussion of grammar.
In the end, what does ‘ashimpa’ mean? I have no idea … But isn’t that the point?
Reviewed by Nanette McGuinness
September 2025 #RivetingReviews titles are available to buy from bookshop.org.
About the reviewers:
Deborah Iwabuchi is a Japanese-to-English translator (www.minamimuki.com) who lives in Maebashi, Japan with her husband. She loves reading kidlit in translation and reviewing it for World Kid Lit and SCBWI Japan Translation Group.
Award-winning opera singer Nanette McGuinness is the translator of over 130 books and graphic novels for children and adults from French, Italian, German and Spanish into English, including the much-loved Geronimo Stilton Graphic Novels, as well as Tiki: A Very Ruff Year(nominated for the 2023 Eisner and Harvey Awards) and Alice on the Run: One Child’s Journey Through the Rwandan Civil War (2023 GLLI YA Translated Book Prize Honor Book, 2023 Mosaic Prize winner, 2023 Excellence in Graphic Literature Finalist and 2023 Harvey Award nominee).
Lori Sieling of Kids Read the World has been reading stories from around the world for the last four years with her two young daughters and the students in her classes. They have explored translation and learned a lot about the world. So far, between 2021 – 2025, they have read books from 115+ countries, and are excited for all the countries they have left.
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