Kategória archívumok: Uncategorized

Ulrich Hub: The Last Sheep (Das letzte Schaf, Carlsen Verlag 2018) Ulrich Hub’s book is one of the winners of the Children’s Book of the Year Award in 2021 in Hungary. Every year, the HUBBY – Hungarian Children’s Book Forum selects books published in the previous year and they have already announced winners in seven categories. Ulrich Hub is a German writer, actor, director and screenwriter. He became world-famous with his first book, Meet at the Ark at Eight! and won prestigious awards in Germany, France, The Netherlands and Italy. Jörg Mühle was born in Germany but studied to be an illustrator in France. He has been working as a freelance illustrator in Frankfurt since 2000 and his drawings are published by many children’s book publishers and newspapers. The story of The Last Sheep begins on the very first Christmas Eve, the day of Jesus’ birth. It is not enough…

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Ben Guterson: Winterhouse (Macmillan Publishing Group 2018) Ben Guterson worked as a public school teacher in a Navajo reservation in New Mexico. In the meantime, he has written articles and book reviews for local magazines and alsomade a travel guide. After working for Microsoft for years, he eventually returned to writing. Winterhouse is his first book. Orphan Elizabeth Somers spends her days unanimously with her aunt and uncle until she is once invited to the Winterhouse Hotel for the winter break. In the huge library of this beautiful hotel, she finds a book full of puzzles, which may be the key to solving the mysteries of the hotel itself. However, Elizabeth has no idea what the dangers of the research are. The idea for writing the book came from the author’s daughter, who one day suggested to him that he should carry a notebook around with him to draw and…

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Kate Milford: Greenglass House (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 2014) Kate Milford’s book, the New York Times bestseller Greenglass House, has won the prestigious Edgar Award in the Best Juvenile Mystery category and has been featured on the Amazon Best Book of the Year list along with several nominations. A sequel to the story and several accompanying volumes have been published since then. It’s very interesting to me that other stories going on in the world of the book have also been released, especially the book that the characters are reading in the first volume. The author currently lives in Brooklyn with her family and besides writing, she also works as a journalist. Greenglass House is a huge old manor that looked as if it had been cobbled together from dozens of different buildings. It got its name from its green glass windows. It stands on a hillside not far from an…

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J.R.R. Tolkien: Letters from Father Christmas (HarperCollins Publishers 2012) J.R.R. Tolkien’s name must probably be known to everybody, as his two greatest works, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings have worldwide fame. However, in addition to these, the author has published several other works from his tales (you can read more about these here) to his lectures at the university (The Monsters and the Critics). The letters written by Father Christmas to Tolkien’s children were first published in 1976 edited by Baillie Tolkien (the wife of the writer’s son, Christopher). Tolkien’s children received not only presents in their socks every year on Christmas morning, but also a lovely letter from Father Christmas. The first letter was addressed to the author’s eldest son, John, at the age of three in 1920, and the letters came until each of the four children reached adolescence: the last letter was received by…

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Yei Theodora Ozaki: Japanese Fairy Tales (first published by Kelly and Walsh in 1903) Many thanks to Digi-Book Kiadó for sending me the book! You can read about Scottish and Celtic fairy tales published by Digi-Book Kiadó previously on BogiWrites. The Japanese tales of this volume are available for the first time in Hungarian, translated by Dr. László Bujtor. The glossary at the end of the volume helps the understanding of Japanese terms that appear in the stories. In this beautiful edition, I would highlight the wonderful eggshell-colored sheets and the ink and pen drawings at the end of the chapters, which are works by Japanese artists and make the book even more “Japanese”. In the book we can read 21 tales of Japanese and one Chinese origin, which come from collections published in the 8th and 10th centuries, and which, until their collection in the 19th century, spread only…

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L. Frank Baum: The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus (Macmillan Collector’s Library 2017, first published in 1902) L. Frank Baum was born in 1856 in Syracuse, USA. He had both German and English ancestry, and their family had a long tradition of celebrating Christmas, including decorating the tree and wearing Santa Claus costumes. The writer worked in the oil industry, running a theater and a household store, but inventing and telling stories has always played an important role in his life. In 1900, he published his most famous work, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, which led children’s bestseller list for two years, and its musical adaptation conquered the Broadway. Two years after his first great success, he wrote a book about the story of Santa Claus. Although there is no historical evidence for his existence, it is believed that St. Nicholas was born in A.D. 280 in the town…

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Agatha Christie: Karácsonyi krimik (Christmas Crimes*, Európa Könyvkiadó 2019) Agatha Christie: Midwinter Murder (HarperCollins Publishers 2020) Cecily Gayford: Murder at Christmas (Profile Books Ltd. 2019) Christmas was a very important holiday for Agatha Christie. It provides the background for several of her stories and she always wanted to wish her readers a pleasant holiday with a new book every year. The three Poirot and one Miss Marple Christmas stories were first collected in one volume in 2019 for the benefit of Hungarian readers. In Midwinter Murder, we can read stories that take place not only at Christmas but throughout this time of the year as well. We find stories starring the two most famous detectives, as well as the adventures of perhaps the lesser-known Parker Pyne, Tommy and Tuppence Beresford or the mysterious Mr. Quin. It is very pleasant to read short stories with winter wibes during this period and…

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Matilda Woods: The Girl, the Cat and the Navigator (Scholastic 2018) Maria Kuzniar: The Ship of Shadows (Puffin Books – Penguin Random House 2020) There are those who love it, there are those who are afraid of it, but everyone finds the sea interesting. In these two books, the sea plays a very important role and shows its different faces. Australian writer Matilda Woods debut book, The Boy, the Bird and the Coffin Maker is a beautiful tale about loss and finding family. Her second book, The Girl, the Cat and the Navigator, deals with a similarly important topic. Despite the serious subject, the atmosphere of the book is not sad but hopeful. The city of Nordlor, on the shores of one of the great fjords leading to the North Sea, is also called the Village of One Thousand Ships because, being no other building material, they build houses from…

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Tove Jansson: Moomins on the Riviera (Drawn and Quarterly 2014) Many thanks to Nimue Kiadó for sending me the book! Tove Jansson, one of the best-known Scandinavian writers and illustrators, was born in Finland in 1914 to Swedish parents. She published her drawings and comics from the age of 15, but her first book was not published until 1945. The first version of The Moomins and the Great Flood had been put on paper in the shadow of war when she needed a tale without princes and princesses. This is how she created the lovely, surreal world of Moomin Valley with its inhabitants, who are able to see the positive side of every situation. The first comic strip appeared in the children’s section of a Finnish-Swedish newspaper in sequels between 1947 and 1948 and was mainly an adaptation of Comet in Moominland. The main series of Moomin comic strips was…

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Zerocalcare: Tentacles at My Throat (Un polpo alla gola; BAO Publishing 2018) Many thanks to Nimue Kiadó for sending me the book! Zerocalcare, originally known as Michele Rech, is the most popular Italian comic artist of the last 20 years. He spent his childhood in France, later he moved to Rome. During his career as a graphic designer, he designed illustrations, posters, covers for various newspapers, but also worked in telephone customer service, at the airport, and translated hunting and fishing documentaries. His first book, The Armadillo Prophecy, has won several prestigious awards, worth 17 editions in Italy and has sold 100,000 copies and has now become a true modern classic among comics. Zerocalcare is currently writing a comic blog called zerocalcare.it, which is very popular, although it doesn’t cover the usual superhero stories, but writes on very serious topics. His comics are brutally honest and touchingly deep. Today, more…

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