This week we take a whirlwind tour of kidlit from Flanders as Lien Devos and Rachel Toogood tell us about their favourite English translations, the new Flip Through Flanders campaign, and the Flemish writers they’d love to see translated into English. 

By Johanna McCalmont

WKL: Flanders Literature is a wonderful initiative and I was excited to see Flip Through Flanders launched at the 2023 London Book Fair. Can you tell us about your work promoting Flemish literature? 

Lien Devos: Flanders is the northern, Dutch-speaking part of Belgium, and Flanders Literature is an autonomous organisation funded by the Flemish Ministry of Culture. In Flanders, it supports the literary sector in ‘from author to reader’: with creation grants for authors and illustrators, support for literary organisations, translators and publishers and for people and organisations who work on reading promotion. Abroad, it focuses on the promotion of literature from Flanders, by maintaining a wide network of foreign publishers and introducing them to the best new work from its region, and by offering translation grants as well as support for inviting an author, illustrator, or translator abroad. Every now and then, Flanders Literature works on bigger projects, whether it’s being the guest of honour at an international book fair or a campaign like Flip Through Flanders.

Flip Through Flanders aims to promote Dutch-language literature from Flanders across the UK and Ireland, by way of authors and translators at live events and workshops, residencies and collaborations with local festivals and literary organisations. From picture books and comics to theatre, from poetry and novels to non-fiction: come and flip through Flanders!

WKL: Which books from Flanders already available in English would you say are ones to look out for?

Rachel Toogood: Ohhhhh, this is a tough one as there are so many brilliant books! I think I’ll start with Leo Timmers and his brilliant book Bear’s Lost Glasses, translated by David Colmer (Lerner Publishing). Leo is a both a writer and an illustrator and really his illustrations speak for themselves, but they are always accompanied by a simple text, which is rendered beautifully into English in this book by David Colmer. I had the absolute joy of visiting Leo’s studio in Brussels and was completely blown away by seeing his illustrations in the flesh: they are just stunning. This book is the charming story of Bear losing his glasses and seeing the world through very different eyes – a tree becomes a deer and a bush becomes a crocodile – until he bumps into his friend, Giraffe; Bear finds his glasses and they discover what Bear really saw! Leo has also written and illustrated several other gorgeous books: Kind Crocodile, translated by Bill Nagelkerke (Gecko Press) and Elephant Island, translated by James Brown (Gecko Press). All of his books are hugely loved in Belgium and the Netherlands and across the world, both by little kids and by anyone who loves illustration.

Next up I’ll mention Tom Schamp. Tom is also a writer-illustrator, and I also had the pleasure of seeing him at work at his studio in Brussels! Tom’s books, such as Wheels, the Big Fun Book of Vehicles, translated by Florian Michaël Duijsens (Prestel Publishing) and It’s a Great Big Colourful World, translated by Michele Hutchison (Prestel Publishing) are full of the most detailed, beautiful drawings all relating to the subject matter of the book. Wheels plots the history of transport from the Stone Age to modern times, from the Trojan Horse to the Harley Davidson, the skateboard to the Honda Civic. Each page is jam-packed with facts and illustrations that you could get lost in for hours and hours. Imagine Richard Scarry’s books and then multiply the amount of illustrations by 10! 

I also want to mention the book Later When I’m Big, illustrated by Mattias De Leeuw from Flanders, written by Dutch author Bette Westera and translated by Laura Watkinson (Eerdmans). It’s a gorgeous book telling the story of a mother and child visiting a swimming pool and the girl dreaming of all the things she’ll do when she grows up – diving with mermaids and dancing with jellyfish, sleeping besides bats and playing with the monsters under her bed. Bette’s ideas are beautifully and tenderly put into the most gorgeous illustrations by Mattias, and Laura’s fantastic translation transports you into the girl’s dreamland. 

There are sooooo many more brilliant books to choose from, these are just three of them for now. 

WKL: If you could choose three writers from Flanders that are yet to be translated into English, who would they be and why?

LD: The first one’s easy: Bart Moeyaert. I always joke that when I find an English-language publisher for Bart, I’d have done what I needed to do and can retire. Bart’s the winner of the 2019 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, which is sometimes called ‘the Nobel prize for children’s literature’. His work is like no other: sensory, poetic, filmic… and yet so much happens between the lines. David Almond has called it ‘fearless’ and ‘brilliant’ and I could not agree more when he also said it “is not just for children; it’s for all of us.”

The second one would be Gerda Dendooven. She’s a writer-illustrator and is quite incomparable on both counts. Her expressive work is quirky in the most wonderful way. Her figures often are a little grotesque and she has a great sense of absurd humour. Come to think of it, with those characteristics I think her work is quite distinctly Belgian!

The third is novelist Els Beerten, who, unlike most writers from Flanders, writes in a distinctly Flemish way. Her characters often speak the (usually unwritten) Flemish variant of Dutch, and her writing feels as if she’s written it all down in one go. It offers deep psychological insight in a rich and vivid language and deserves to be discovered by English-speaking readers too.

WKL: How can people engage with and find out more about children’s and YA books from Flanders?

RT: Keep an eye on our Flip Through Flanders event page. You can still draw along with Tom Schamp in an online event with Reading is Magic. Follow us on social media too. 

Mattias and Bette will be appearing in a festival in springtime and we hope that Leo and Tom will also be at some festivals later in the spring and autumn. Watch this space!

If you’re a literary translator, aspiring or experienced, Laura Watkinson will be leading workshops with some of Bart Moeyaert’s texts in this year’s BCLT Summer School. For more information and to apply see here.