World Kid Lit Month 2026: Explorer Challenger: 13-18: GLLI Translated YA Book Prize

 

This is our place.

Written by Vitor Martins.

Translated from Brazilian Portuguese by Larissa Helena.

Push, 2022.

The house at Number 8 Sunflower Street tells the stories of three teenagers who have lived within its walls in the 21st century: Ana, a lesbian forced to leave her home, Greg sent to live with his aunt when his parents divorce, and Beto, a would-be photographer living during the COVID pandemic.

The blurb makes it sound like Ana is kicked out – when the fact is that her father accepts her, and they move out to a different city.

The timelines and characters meet and entwine throughout the book.

World Kid Lit Month 2026: Explorer Challenger: 7-12: The Americas

 

The first rule of punk.

Written by Celia C. Pérez.

Puffin Books, 2018.

There are no shortcuts to surviving your first day at a new school – you can't fix it with duct tape like you would your Chuck Taylors. On Day One, twelve-year-old Malú (María Luisa, if you want to annoy her) inadvertently upsets Posada Middle School's queen bee, violates the school's dress code with her punk rock look, and disappoints her college-professor mom in the process. Her dad, who now lives a thousand miles away, says things will get better as long as she remembers the first rule of punk: be yourself. The real Malú loves rock music, skateboarding, zines, and Soyrizo (hold the cilantro, please). And when she assembles a group of like-minded misfits at school and starts a band, Malú finally begins to feel at home. She'll do anything to preserve this, which includes standing up to an anti-punk school administration to fight for her right to express herself!

Identity, trying to fit yourself into moulds – and be true to yourself. Balancing the different parts of your identity, and people’s expectations. The wonder in finding like-minded people – particularly sympathetic adults.

World Kid Lit Month 2026: Explorer Challenger: 13-18: Asia

 

A forgery of fate.

Written by Elizabeth Lim.

Hodder & Stoughton Limited, 2025.

A gifted art forger, Truyan Saigas has the unique ability to paint the future. But when her father is lost at sea, not even magic can heal her family, or save her two younger sisters from the dangerous consequences of her mother's gambling debts. Then Elang, a mysterious dragon lord, offers her a deal: in exchange for a fresh start for her mother and sisters, Tru must enter a marriage contract and join him in his desolate undersea palace. Once there, Tru will embark on her most dangerous forgery yet. To infiltrate the tyrannical Dragon King's inner circle and paint a future so treasonous, it could upend both the mortal and immortal realms…

I’m a sucker for fairytale retellings – and dragons. So, this mix of Beauty and the Beast, Rapunzel, and dragons – is right up my alley. Alas, I don’t think my brain was up to it much, and I got a bit lost in the middle. If you want an action romance fantasy – with dragons and mermaids! – then please read it. And do it better justice than my tired brain did. 

World Kid Lit Month 2026: Explorer Challenger: 7-12: Graphic Novel or Comic

  

The ribbon skirt.

Written and illustrated by Cameron Mukwa.

Graphix, an Imprint of Scholastic Inc., 2024.

Graphic novel.

Ten-year-old Anang wants to make a ribbon skirt, a piece of clothing typically worn by women in the Anishinaabe tradition, for an upcoming powwow. Anang is two-spirit and nonbinary and doesn't know what others will think of them wearing a ribbon skirt, but they're determined to follow their heart's desire. Anang sets off to gather the materials needed to make the skirt and turns to those around them - their family, their human and turtle friends, the crows, and even the lake itself - for help. And maybe they'll even find a new confidence within themself along the way.

A joyful story of acceptance, in many guises – and the importance of role models. I love that Anang’s grandparents are so accepting and matter-of-fact. As are the friends and mentors from the non-human world. And some humans.

World Kid Lit Month 2026: Explorer Challenger: 0-6: The Americas

  

Being home.

Written by Traci Sorell.

Illustrated by Michaela Goade.

Kokila, 2024.

On a day filled with anticipation, a young Cherokee girl bids farewell to her familiar city life and documents the changing landscape through drawings as her family moves to their ancestral land and embraces their new home.

From my article for World Kid Lit: 

A joyous return to Home, through the point of a view of a child. This book works against the stereotype of ‘Rez’ life as sub-standard and lacking. It also is an antidote, a reversal, of the times First Nations citizens were forcibly moved.

Traci Sorrell is a Cherokee Nation citizen who lives within her tribe’s reservation in northeastern Oklahoma. Michaela Goade is a member of the Tlingit Nation and grew up in her ancestral homelands along the southeast coast of Alaska.