LITTLE FOX travels to...

Wow - the twelfth country for our Little Fox book (in Dutch: Vosje) is confirmed. The book, with its beautiful, beautiful art work by Marije Tolman, will be published in Turkey. A big thank you to the publishing house of MEAV!

Little Fox traveled to the United States, Argentina, Slovenia, North-Macedonia, Germany, France, Italy, Iran, Lithuania, Russia and Slovakia before. It was originally published by Querido in Amsterdam, and rights can be negociated with Querido's rights manager Luciënne van der Leije.Thanks also to The Black Cat Agency!

 

Bluegrass Love in Latvia

A while ago the rights were sold, but now the physical book has been published: the translation into Latvian of The days of bluegrass love, my first young adult novel about the true, lifechanging love between Tycho Zeling and Oliver Kjelsberg.

In Latvia the book is called Zilās zāles vasara, it is published by the great publishing house of Liels un Mazs and translated by Dens Dimiņš.
The beautiful cover illustration is by Elīna Brasliņa.

I'm really proud that this book found its way to Latvia, a country that I have visited quite a few times, and that I am really fond of. I hope the book will now find its way to young Latvian readers. It can be ordered here.

Next year the American translation will be published by Levine Querido. Inquiries for new rights can be done here (Luciënne van der Leije, rights manager), and here you can find a special of the Dutch Literature Fund about this book. 

Little Fox, Little Fox...

Our book Little Fox (in Dutch: Vosje) continues to surprise us. With 'us' I mean illustrator Marije Tolman and myself. Apart from the recent fifth print run for the Dutch edition there was a second print run, within a few months, in France, and today we got the news that the book will travel to its seventh country.

After Russia, France, Germany, Italy, the US and Iran the book will be made translated into Macedonian. At the new publishing house of Chudna Suma!
The book was orginially published by Querido, Amsterdam. Further rights can be negociated here.

Sam to a brand new language...

Dutch version of book two

I wrote two books about a big, dreamy, almost magical white dog, called Sam. The first book was A dog like Sam (2011) and the second one Sam in winter (2012). The illustrations were by the awesome Philip Hopman and the original publishing company was Querido.

French version of the first book

The books were sold to the US, to France, Germany, Estonia and South-Africa, but now there's a whole new language for the Sam-adventures: the publishing house of Petrkov bought the rights for the Chech versions of the books. I am very happy that both books will be published in Chech Republic next year!

Thank you very much, Petr Novotný!

THE DAYS OF BLUEGRASS LOVE to...

I fell in love with Latvia almost twenty years ago. I made friends there, I got to visit the country at least five times, and now I have a wonderful reason to go back: my young adult novel The days of bluegrass love (in Dutch: De dagen van de bluegrassliefde) will be published in Latvian in 2020. By the best Latvian publishing house: Liels un Mazs.

This novel, about the glowing love between two eighteen-year old boys, Tycho and Oliver, is one of the three books I wrote about them over the years. It is also one of the titles that brought me the most, personally and as a writer, especially because of the number of reactions I received, both from The Netherlands and Belgium as from Germany, where it was also published. 

The book received the Golden Kiss Award (best book for youth) and is still in reprint in The Netherlands, I'm pretty grateful for that as well. 

But now: on to Latvia! Huge thanks to the Latvian publisher, the wonderful Alise Nigale, and also to Kristine Jonusa and Andrejs Viksna.

NINO in Turkey

The Turkish version of THE DOG THAT NINO DIDN'T HAVE has recently been published. It was issued by Final Kültür Sanat Yayınları under the title: OLMAYAN BIR KÖPEGIN HIKAYESI. Nursen Kaya is the translator.

This book is Anton Van Hertbruggens beautiful first picture book, published by De Eenhoorn. Anton received awards for this book in Belgium, The Netherlands, USA, France and Germany.

The book also came out in English (Eerdmans, USA),
Chinese (Petrel),
Danish (Turbine),
French (Didier Jeunesse),
German (Bohem),
Korean (Jiyangsa),
Russian (Samokat),Ukrainian (Bobrovnikova),
Portuguese (Pulo do Gato, Brazil),
Macedonian (Ars Lamina)
and Spanish (Limonero, Argentina)

More about this title (and about the remaining rights & where to send your request for grants/rights): here.

ESTONIA AND THE OKAPI

Last year our non-fiction book STEM OP DE OKAPI (VOTE FOR THE OKAPI) came out in Holland and now it travels to Estonia. The book was richely illustrated by the great Martijn van der Linden and contains a warm plea for this shy but majestic animal. There are many, many drawings, there are interviews, poems, historical parts, lyrical descriptions, there is an Okapi Museum - and Martijn and I received the Woutertje Pieterse Award (best book of the year, experts' choice) for it, as well as a Zilveren Griffel (for the text) and an Honorary Mention (for the illustrations).
Publishing house Päike ja Pilv will issue the book in Estonia. Before they did my two books about the dog Sam. As those two, VOTE FOR THE OKAPI will be translated by Kerti Tergem.
Rights for the book can be negotiated here, and translation grants can be requested here.

SAM ENTERS FRANCE

My book TOEN KWAM SAM now came out in France. The French translation, for the publishing house of L'école des loisirs, was made by Maurice Lomré.
This is the fifteenth edition of the book, after the original one (Querido, Amsterdam), the eleven editions in South-Africa, and the ones in Estonia (Päike ja Pilv) and Germany (Carlsen).

All the editions also show the beautiful illustrations, made by Philip Hopman. Later this year the American edition will be issued (Eerdmans).
A big thank you to all publishers!

KOREAN NEWS, TWICE

A little while ago the Korean translation of THE DOG THAT NINO DIDN'T HAVE was published in South-Korea, at the publishing house of Jiyangsa. This book, made by illustrator Anton Van Hertbruggen and me, was already issued in German, Chinese, Danish, French and American English. The Brazilian version will follow soon.
Originally the book was published by De Eenhoorn. It got several awards, including the 'Gulden Palet' (Netherlands), the 'Boekenpauw' (Belgium), the 'Prix Sorcières' (France) and the Silver Medal of the Society of Illustrators (USA).
Rights can be viewed here.

But more Korean books are coming. The publishing house of Lime co. bought the Korean rights of THIRTEEN RUNNING DEER, the book that Mattias De Leeuw and I made. This will be out in the fall of 2016 and after the German, Chinese (mainland) and Chinese (Taiwan) it will be the fourth international version. Recently the book was nominated for the German Literature Award.
Rights can be checked at De Eenhoorn, here.

BRUNO IN DUTCH

The happiness of a translator: besides writing my own books, I get to translate books that I adore. This is certainly the case with this ravishing book: BRUNO WORDT EEN SUPERHELD - Bruno becomes a superhero, written by Norwegian writer Håkon Øvreås. (Original title: BRUNE). It got a number of awards in Scandinavia, and rightfully so. The illustrations, by Øyvind Torseter, are fantastic as well. In Holland the book was issued by Querido, and hopefully it will find its way to a lot of young readers.