National Book Prize Malta, be part of the new book, and other news :)

[ 0 ] 17/06/2021 | liza

Hello lovely people :),

I hope this email finds you well. It looks like there won’t be any traveling outside of Norway for us this summer as we’re waiting to get vaccinated, so I’m going to accept that our reunion with family and friends outside of this country will need to be further postponed. I decided I’m going to try and focus on the positive, just like the kids do in my book “Cousins Forever“, so here’s something really beautiful about life in Horten in the summer.

Focus on the positive

The days are very long during the summer season, and the nights are not pitch black, more like twilight. I love daylight, and this gives us the opportunity to spend lots of time outdoors and soak in the sun when it’s sunny. The weather can be unstable in this country, with lots of sun, and rain, even within the same day, and as a result, the summers are always green, full of blossoms and blooming flowers. Here’s my absolute favorite rose tree of this season.

National Book Prize Malta

The longlist for the National Book Prize (adults) and Terramaxka Prize 2021 (children’s books) in Malta has been announced, and “Where am I from?” which was published in Malta by Faraxa Publishing stands a chance to win in the category “Original works: books for children (ages 0-7)” for the Terramaxka 2021: books published in 2020. The shortlist of both the Terramaxka and National Book Prize titles will be announced at the beginning of August 2021. Wish us luck. We need it 🙂 !!!!

Here‘s the long list.
Behind the scenes photos of the murals.
The hardcover is currently heavily discounted at 9.50 euro on the publisher’s website.

This was the very first photo taken of this project. It was quite a challenge to create this book, especially for Platon, the street artist who painted all the murals.

New book – your kids/students are invited to participate!

As in “Cousins Forever“, I would love to include the first names of the children on the last page + photos of their very own creations. Are you in?

This is what I’d like us to do this time:

Give your child(ren) an empty box (shoebox, carton box, big or small, any sort of box that you might have at home), colors/stickers/ribbons to decorate it -IF they’d like to decorate it-, and then ask them to fill it in during the next couple of days with their favorite items and/or whatever grabs their interests and attention, from sticks and petals to scraps of paper, or to… nothing at all. The purpose of this activity is to let their personalities and interests shine since each box is going to be unique, as is every kid ❤.

These photos will also inspire me during the writing process, as one of the things I would like kids to see through this book is how different we all see, experience, understand, process and enjoy the very same world around us, and that each unique perspective is equally valid, to be appreciated and respected. It’s fun, colorful, and interesting to see how one kid might be more inclined towards music, another one might make sense of the world via patterns, a third one might be physical and express herself through sports. What if our children recognize this early on, work on their strengths since early childhood, and help their classmates do the same?

Join the conversation in my FB readers’ group where we discuss all the details, or hit reply and let me know via email if you’d like to participate in this book project.

Thank you so much – can’t wait to get fully started working on this!

Free ebooks

Our collaborative 6-month long promo is still on, and you can download for free all the books listed here, on the 1st of each month till October. The page is packed with books so just give it some time to load, and if you’re not using amazon.com for eBooks, search for the titles that grabbed your interest at your local Amazon store. My children’s books are available in 18 languages in total, including English.

Here’s a lovely review of the Spanish edition of “Happiness Street“, which is part of this bundle, by Leanna Guillen Mora from All Done Monkey and the founder of Multicultural Kid Blogs.

“Happiness Street – Calle Felicidad is a lovely picture book that celebrates summer and family. In it, a child looks back on her summer at grandmother’s house by the beach. That magical place truly is “happiness street,” as the children have named it. The paintings of the book are gorgeous. The bilingual version is a great opportunity to practice colors in Spanish! The story concludes when Mother comes to take the children back home, and they experience the bittersweet emotions that come with the end of vacation, though it is tempered by the promise of next summer on Happiness Street. A lovely way to celebrate the transition from vacation.”

And here’s what the students of Maria Lappas, Greek language teacher at @The Olive Tree Greek Education and Cultural Center in the USA did after reading the bilingual English-Greek edition of the same book – the kids painted their very own summer memories, practiced writing them in Greek, and had lots of fun at their language school

. Have your kids or students been inspired to be creative in any form after reading any of my books? I’d love to see more photos

. The amazing, real watercolor paintings featured both in “Happiness Street” and “Cousins Forever” are by Charikleia Arkolaki. Have I told you she’s my sister?