Pedro Mañas: Anna Kadabra – Full Moon Club* (El Club de la Luna Llena; Destino Infantil 2020)
Pedro Mañas has a degree in English Philology from the Autonomous University of Madrid and has already been awarded several prestigious prizes for children’s literature. His award-winning books have been translated to French, German, Portuguese, Korean and Chinese, among others. Anna Kadabra moves with her family to the dusty little town of Moonville. Their new residence, despite the mysterious rumors about witches, doesn’t even seem exciting. Or does it? Three more books from the seven published so far in Spanish will be published soon in Hungarian.
Annie M. G. Schmidt: Minoes, or Undercover Kitty (Querido 1970)
The Dutch writer was born in 1911 and wrote her first poems at the age of 14. She later worked as a librarian then made a daily children’s series for the newspaper with illustrator Fiep Westendorp. In the Minoes, we can admire the drawings of Carl Hollander, the illustrator of Pippi Logstocking. In Killendoorn, Tibbe, a shy journalist, constantly writes about cats. The lucky coincidence brings him together with Minou, who has good acquaintances among the cats in town, so Tibbe can learn all about the cat press service in the town.
Adam Rex: The True Meaning of Smekday (Disney-Hyperion Books for Children 2007)
The names of Gratuity Tucci (Tip for her friends), Oh, and the boovs may be familiar to us because of the Dreamworks animated movie called Home in 2015. It is less known that the cartoon is based on Adam Rex’s novel. The writer and illustrator graduated at the University of Arizona in fine arts and has been awarded several times for his works. He said that Douglas Adams (writer of The Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy) was the biggest influence on his writings. The 12-year-old Tip has to write five pages about Smek Day, and she is not sure where to begin: on Christmas Eve, when huge, bizarre spaceships descended on Earth or when the aliens kidnapped her mother? Her story, however, goes beyond a school contest.
Katie & Kevin Tsang: Dragon Mountain (Simon and Schuster 2020)
Katie and Kevin Tsang met in 2008 when they were both studying at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Since then, they have lived on three different continents and visited over 40 countries. They currently live in London with their little daughter. Dragon Mountain is the first volume in the Dragon Realm series. Billy Chan is sent to China by his parents to the Dragon Camp to the middle of nowhere. The boy would much rather stay at home in California than spend time with strangers. However, he must realize that the camp still holds excitement when he and his teammates discover a secret entrance to a nearby mountain…
*my translation
