10


got the attention it deserved and I can’t understand why.


It’s a warm-hearted


and hilarious story about a boy and a fish who meet on holiday and become the unlikeliest of friends – I never pass up an opportunity to recommend it.) Though at the risk of disloyalty to my beloved Shola, I should also mention a more recent passion: the gloriously enjoyable Elise and the Second- Hand Dog. Naturally, this dog talks, too, though this time in an unexpected Scottish accent.


(And OK, in the interest of fairness, I do just occasionally also like some cat


books. Read The Cat Who Came in off the Roof if you haven’t already – it’s a treat. It’s by the legendary Annie M.G. Schmidt.)


I’ve even translated some books myself, including many picture books – if you don’t know it, look at Don’t Cross the Line, by Isabel Minhós Martins and Bernardo Carvalho, an incredibly clever look at how to challenge arbitrary authority built into a simple


picture-book


Lest my choices above make you wonder whether my personal taste in children’s books is overwhelmingly young and light and quirky,


I conceit.


Translating a picture book can be harder than you think, by the way – so few words, but they have to work with such density and detail, and speak to their images. Just consider something like Chris Haughton’s work, a book like A Bit Lost (he’s


another favourite of mine) – apart from everything else, there’s such incredible precision. When I Want to Keep Silent by Zornitsa Christova and Kiril Zlatkov (a young bear’s thoughts on the strength of words and silence) contains fewer than eighty words, but great beauty and sophistication.


Of course, some of the most powerful of all picture books are totally wordless, which could allow sensible publishers to do without pesky translators entirely. I’ve just this week been introduced to Maja Kastelic’s beautiful A Boy and a House, which happens to be from Slovenia, but you wouldn’t know it – apart from the jacket, you have no way of knowing that it happens to be a book without any Slovene words rather than without any English words…


(The one thing even harder for a translator than picture books is poetry, of course, but I try my best to avoid that sort of work myself – yes, I’m a glutton for punishment, but only within reason. Others do it wonderfully, though: if you doubt that, The Emma Press have just published a charming and delightfully peculiar collection by Contra, Everyone’s the Smartest.)


should probably mention a couple of counterexamples (both for older readers) – how about the Marsh Award-winning In the Sea There Are Crocodiles, based on the real testimony of an Afghan refugee, so gripping and so filled with compassion? Or Tina’s Web, another story about a young person forced to cross a continent and make a new home, but in altogether different circumstances? That one’s by Alki Zei, a children’s/ YA writer not much known here but who was a real ground-breaker in her native Greece. But yes, OK, allow me one more not-altogether-serious story to round things off, because the latest book to arrive in the post this week is called Arnica, by Ervin Lázár, and it’s a fairy-tale about kindness and ducks (among other things). I love it. It’s only just out – order yourself a copy today.


So – a very grand total of twenty- seven stories! Placed side by side, they are stories about travel and bravery and discovery; about freedom; about striving to be better and surprising ourselves. They are enlightening and various and fun, heart-warming and heart-breaking. They are stories about celebrating our differences and forming unlikely friendships,


often circumstances.


What else do they have in common? Each of my chosen twenty-seven stories comes from a different one of the twenty-seven countries who will continue, hereafter, to constitute the European Union. To me, their stories add up to something immeasurably precious, for which I’ve never been more thankful. What good fortune, what a privilege, to have shared them.


Daniel Hahn is a writer, editor and translator, and somebody who should know better than to write an article about international books without naming any of the translators. (Translators have a strictly enforced #namethetranslator campaign, which this article is quite spectacularly failing to respect; Daniel Hahn apologises grovelingly to his friends and won’t do it again.)


Books for Keeps No.235 March 2019 11 in unexpected


twentyseven


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