And just like that … another busy, bubbly and book-filled World Kid Lit Month is over! We’ve been bowled over by the engagement online and offline, from bookshops to libraries, schools to the publishing press. Here’s a whistlestop tour of 10 highlights of World Kid Lit Month 2026…
1. Here at World Kid Lit blog
As always, it was a frenetically busy month of book reviews and Around the World in 10 posts here at World Kid Lit!
Our reviewers took us to Finland, Spain, Nigeria and Ghana. We featured verse novels from Ireland, Canada and New Zealand, and Freeman Book Award winners set in Indonesia, Cambodia and Vietnam. Nanette McGuinness reviewed two Japanese nominees of the 2026 Eisner Comics Awards, Laura Simeon took us to India via middle grade fiction, and Lori danced us to Korea, Germany and Italy with Music Everywhere! We had books about cats, folklore and mythology, neurodiversity, and Girl Power Africa Style!
We also enjoyed celebrating some of our favorite bookstores and World Kid Lit websites with our Around the World in 10 lists.
2. Booklists & reviews
It’s been great to see so many World Kid Lit Month book reviews and globe-trotting booklists, including 15 international books recommended by the School Library Journal, 9 new books to read now at Words Without Borders, three new European releases at European Literature Network, and international picture books selected by Tacoma Public Library.
UK charity Empathy Lab selected these 9 recommendations, for a range of ages, and lots of publishers shared translations and international highlights from their backlists, such as Walker Books and Eerdmans Books for Young Readers.
3. Children’s publishing features
Publishers’ Weekly published a staggering ten articles on global writing for young people this month to celebrate the anniversary of World Kid Lit Month!
These included picture books from Mongolia with Enchanted Lion Books’ ‘The Dreamcrafter’ series; Miriam Udel’s Finding Timely Themes in a 1930s Yiddish Tale; and Argentine cartoon classic Mafalda Comes to America (with a Netflix series to follow in 2027!).
Don’t miss Ruth Donnelly’s compelling feature Celebrating Batchelder Winner Azul López’s ‘Croco’ and Latin American Children’s Literature (SLJ).
4. Translator insights
As always, September is the perfect time to find out more about how books travel with the creative help of literary translators. Anam Zafar gave an insightful webinar on translating comics and graphic novels at CIOL – available on demand for members and anyone who registered to watch it.
Publishers Weekly, Asymptote, GLLI and The Week Junior (UK) all featured literary translation for children. Translator interviews this month included Kit Maude and Lindsay Turner discussing their children’s book translations for Tapioca Stories and Transit Children’s Editions; Anam Zafar and Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp on literary translation as activism; Jocelyne Allen on her translation from Japanese of Colorful; translators Sawad Hussain and Nour Jaljuli taking us to Palestine with their new translation of The Necklace of Seven Souls; and Avery Fisher Udagawa and Christopher Holmes comparing their two published translations of Sachiko Kashiwaba’s Village Beyond the Mist.
We always love seeing translators sharing their work in World Kid Lit Month, and one particular highlight was Agnes Monod-Gayraud’s lovely insta reel of her translations from Polish and French.
5. Events and conferences
It was wonderful to see bookshops hosting translation events such as the Spanish children’s translation workshop at How Brave Is The Wren? bookshop in Birmingham.
We had a fantastic time talking global reading with librarians, and playing the Where in the World? books and map game at the National Literacy Trust’s Inclusive Libraries Conference in Sheffield and London this month.
Huge thanks and kudos to the Centre for Book Cultures and Publishing at the University of Reading for hosting the inspiring Languages of Children’s Books conference. Online and in person, it offered an absolutely packed schedule of talks, workshops and publisher presentations, all on the theme of Celebrating Translation and Linguistic Diversity in the National Year of Reading.
6. Global Literature in Libraries Initiative (GLLI)
The month-long Japan feature at GLLI curated by Avery Fischer Udagawa and Holly Thompson was simply phenomenal. The month’s posts were arranged by target age, so that we encountered books for older readers as the month progressed, opening with board books for the very youngest readers. Picture book reviews included Surreal Worlds in Japanese Picture Books (by our co-editor Jackie!); the inimitable Shinsuke Yoshitake; Funny Books that Nurture the Soul, Four Challenging Picture Books Created with Purpose; Whimsical Picture Books from Japan to Explore; and Rainy Weather From All Angles.
For middle grade readers, we were introduced to yokai comics master, Shigeru Mizuki; sports and competition in manga; Summer Adventures and Goodbyes; Middle-Grade Books on War and Memory; and a review of the new volume 2 of Kiki’s Delivery Service. A fascinating read is translator David Jacobson’s reflection on Are You an Echo? The Lost Poetry of Misuzu Kaneko.
Teen and YA lit features included 4 Japanese novels about relationships; a wartime memoir; cats, cafes and cozy fiction for teens; fantasy and history in graphic novels; and 2 YA novels from a Zainichi Korean perspective.
The amazing reviewers at GLLI also feature international books for young readers every Wednesday (World Kid Lit Wednesday), this month taking us to Afghanistan with the graphic novel Papa Drew a Thousand Birds (translated from German by Marianne Martens).
7. World Kid Lit in bookshops and libraries
What can we say, other than how awesome is it to see World Kid Lit Month displays popping up in bookshops and libraries around the world? And great to see librarians’ excitement as they discovered #WorldKidLitMonth and took part for the first time this year.
8. World Kid Lit Explorer Challenge
It’s been wonderful to see so many people start an Explorer Challenge, printing out or adapting our bingo charts. (These are available here all year round and you’ll also find a Canva link to an editable version!)
Our star World Kid Lit champion in Aotearoa, Annie Coppell, reviewed an incredible 30 books inspired by the Explorer Challenge bingo chart: see all the books on Annie’s blog and on Bluesky. And even now in October, she hasn’t stopped: this month it’s October Kiwi Kids Books!
We loved seeing the World Kid Lit Month Explorer Challenge run by Book Bank Regent Park in Toronto, and this lovely post about Lori’s family reading project.
9. Instagram action
As always, there was an amazing range of picture book recommendations including Lori’s 30 second book reviews (@KidsReadtheWorld) and international middle grade from Chris (@BroadeningtheBookshelf). We loved this reel from @ParrotStreet, and posts from @mamaFilz, and illustrator @anya_glazer.
The #AroundtheWorldin10 series was a big hit on Instagram; we might continue this into the next year as it’s a great way to showcase the diversity of international children’s books in English at a glance. It was fabulous to see teachers and children’s book reviewers share World Kid Lit recs with the #8BrilliantBooks hashtag, too!
10. September is also…
2026 is a milestone not just for World Kid Lit, it’s also the 40th anniversary of the International Youth Library’s incredible annual White Ravens catalogue which spotlights outstanding new publications in international children’s and YA literature. This September also marked the 10th anniversary of literary translator Helen Wang’s must-read blog, Chinese books for young readers. This month, Helen spotlighted the Chinese selections from the 2026 White Ravens list.
September is also Latine/x Heritage Month and East and South East Asian (ESEA) Heritage Month, so the internet has been bursting with fantastic recommendations of must-read authors, illustrators and books, many in translation. Particularly on Instagram, you’ll find so many great children’s book recommendations with the hashtags #ESEAheritagemonth, #latinxheritagemonth and #latineheritagemonth.
Buy Books and Support World Kid Lit!
Over at our World Kid Lit online bookstore, you will find dozens of curated booklists for young people from 0-18, covering themes such as Read Africa, Read Asia, Read the Americas, Read Europe, Read Oceania, the USBBY Outstanding International Books, Batchelder Award winners and honor titles, the IBBY Honor List, Children’s poetry in translation, mythology, Spanish Kid Lit, Chinese Kid Lit, and more.
We earn a small commission every time you buy books via the affiliate links on our site, or via our booklists at UK Bookshop.org. This helps support our charitable work as a non-profit community interest company such as donating free international book bundles to schools and running the Schools’ International Reading Award. Thank you!
