Elizabeth Vonarburg's Reluctant Voyagers (1995) Trans. from the French Jane Brierley Does sci-fi reading use a different muscle? If so, mine is out of practice. And no wonder. With exception of a handful of fantasy novels and one speculative fiction novel, I've been decidedly rooted in realism this reading year.
Astrid Lindgren's Pippi Longstocking (1945) Trans. Florence Lamborn Illus. Louis S. Glanzman NY: Viking Press, 1950 My copy of Pippi Longstocking is a bookclub edition, one of several that my mother ordered for me when I was a girl. What sets Pippi (and Rudyard Kipling's Kim) apart in this series, however, is the
Jules Verne's Around the World in 80 Days (1873) Illus. Jame's Prunier Trans. Barbara Brister "The Whole Story" Viking, 1996 I discovered "The Whole Story" editions one Saturday afternoon browsing in the Children's Library. They're lavishly illustrated: think, annotations in photographs. (Unfortunately I couldn't find the corresponding cover image that
Juan Ramón Jiménez's Platero and I (1914) Trans. Eloïse Roach University of Texas Press, 1957 When I saw that Platero and I was listed in both 1001 Children's Books You Must Read Before You Grow Up and 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die, I thought I must really have been missing something
Carlos Maria Dominguez’s The House of Paper (2004) Trans. from the Spanish, Nick Caistor Illus. Peter Sis Harcourt, 2005 My first thought when it came to trying to describe this small, slim volume was that it was like Anne Fadiman's Ex Libris mixed with Bohumil Hrabal's Too Loud a Solitude. But that's not
