I’m so thrilled to see World Kid Lit turn ten, having been one of its founders and having cheered the team that formed around this wonderful resource from the sidelines ever since. The credit goes to everyone who has contributed over the years, and above all to Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp for her dedication and passion without which this important volunteer-led initiative would not have become what it is today. Here’s to another decade and more!

My name is Ayò Oyeku, and I serve as the lead African contributor to World Kid Lit. In this capacity, I devote myself chiefly to reviewing children’s literature crafted by African authors both home and abroad. I also spotlight some of these amazing writers and illustrators through interviews. Far more than a voluntary endeavour, I regard this work as a means of unveiling Africa’s rich narratives to the wider world, while gently inviting the world, in turn, to discover Africa. Of this reciprocal gift of stories and understanding, I am most proud.

I wholeheartedly recommend The Missing Chicken, written by Ugo Anidi, illustrated by Folasade Adeshida, and published in Nigeria by Books for Umu Ntii (BUN). In this witty and humorous picture book, young Ola embarks upon a quest to recover her Mama’s vanished chicken.

I was blog editor from 2019 to 2023, working to create and curate content for our weekly blog posts. My years as blog editor were truly some of my most fulfilling and I really enjoyed being completely immersed in the world of children’s literature, connecting with such a variety of people who were and are so passionate about global books for young people.

Volunteering with World Kid Lit impacted on my own work as an emerging translator at the time, inspiring and encouraging me to push my own boundaries – I would not be where I am today without the supportive World Kid Lit community. My current translation project is due for release in February 2027 and is my first translation from Catalan: The Murderess of Venice by Pol Castellanos, an exciting World War I murder mystery combined with a sprinkling of Norse mythology!  

I help with the social media team. I love the way WKL makes me discover a world of books and translations that I wouldn’t otherwise come across. There are book lists from around the world but also for different ages, from the very small to the young adults. I also really enjoy the passion and enthusiasm of the contributors. 

One of my favourite recent reads has been The Boy From Clearwater by Yu Pei-Yun, illustrated by Zhou Jian-Xin and translated by Lin King. It tells the story of Taiwan all the way from the Japanese occupation of the 1930s to present day through the lense of the life of human rights activist Tsai Kun-Lin. The artwork is fantastic, they use a different coloured font to show the different languages at play and the cultural mix of the island. I have read it with my two teen daughters and it has really helped explain, in a really gripping way, the history of a very complicated area of the world.

It’s hard to believe, but I’ve been editing the World Kid Lit blog for FIVE years! My favorite part has been getting to know the wonderful people in this community: translators, advocates, publishers, writers. It’s fun to realize that thanks to World Kid Lit I have new friends around the world.

Two books I love and admire are Sato the Rabbit and Louis Undercover. I cover many more of my favorites in my newsletter On Beyond.

I am a literary translator of over 200 books in many different genres, more than half of which are kidlit and am one of the original co-founders of World Kid Lit.

I love but don’t often get a chance to work on children’s poetry, so I’d recommend When You Were A Cloud by Chilean poet María José Ferrada and Mexican artist Azul López, forthcoming from The Emma Press in September (the third children’s poetry collection I’ve translated for them, and the third book by Ferrada I’ve gotten to translate, too).

What was my role? I guess I opened the website? I saw what Meytal did with Women in Translation Month, and I thought about the incredible gaps in English-language literature for young readers. We lived in the US for a few years when my kids were small, and the glimpses that English-language books gave them — of the world beyond the United States — were so patently ridiculous. The only picture books you could find that even represented an African nation did so with a friendly elephant and a lion and maybe some pyramids. And that’s just representation. You can forget the different cadences, art and storytelling styles, ideas, and genres that other literatures could gift young readers. I know there are brilliant publishers out there doing great work! But in the public libraries, the books we could access were [makes sad face].

I would recommend Hooda Shawa’s The Necklace of Seven Souls, translated from Arabic by Sawad Hussain and Nour Jaljuli (Yonder Books). I would also like to recommend Hooda’s Dragon of Bethlehem, because I’ve got a *huge* soft spot for dragons, but we’re still looking for a publisher for that one.

I started out with World Kid Lit writing about Indian children’s literature in translation, an exercise that expanded my own research and knowledge of the field as well. I then became a Committee Member in 2020 and in the pandemic, I put my newly acquired Zoom skills to great use by setting up WKL Live sessions on YouTube. We hosted sessions on Central European literature and young readers; African kidlit; Arabic literature for young readers; and to making kidlit travel around the world. Community-building was the most rewarding part of this exercise and the pandemic gave us a lot of opportunities to do that across continents and linguistic groups. It also gave me inspiration to run my own digital multilingual children’s poetry initiative Mother Tongue Twisters. There were a lot of shared learnings between the two platforms!

One of my favourite Hindi authors is Vinod Kumar Shukla, and I recommend one of the last novels he wrote. It’s called Moonrise from the Green Grass Roof, translated from Hindi by Satti Khanna, who translated all his novels into English. It’s about a young boy Bolu who can speak only while he walks! His teachers have to walk with him if they have to hear him answer their questions in class, and the moon travels with Bolu and his friends for all their adventures. There’s a touch of effortless magical realism in his writings, and it is brought out beautifully in this book! 

I have been a contributor to the World Kid Lit blog for several years and prior to that I actively participated in World Kid Lit Month on social media. I still view myself as librarian even though my role is now volunteering and recommending books online, especially through WKL posts. My involvement in translations for children has deepened my relationships and commitment to support small independent publishers. My support has extended to individual titles including Rosie Runs and Bob & Hilbert for Elsewhere Editions and We Go To The Park for Unruly, in imprint of Enchanted Lion Books. I feel that incredibly proud mother moment every timeI see my name on the copyright page. 

Currently, I am rereading Run For Your Life by Silvana Gandolfi, translated from Italian by Lynne Sharon Schwartz from Yonder Books. It had me on the edge of my seat in 2018, and the twists and suspense still blow me away today.

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