I have two middle grade novels to share with you today. In some ways, they are utterly different stories. One is set in the 1920s on an island off the coast of Massachusetts. The other is a contemporary story taking …
Tag: Scandinavian children’s books

Elsa Beskow reads and read-alikes
It has been a tremendous pleasure for me to research Elsa Beskow and re-read her stories in order to share this week’s posts with you. I know many of you grew up loving these books or raised your children on Elsa’s …

coffee, conversation, & elf hats
I’m sitting in my friend Julie’s cheery kitchen. It’s a couple of days after a snowstorm dumped 10 inches of snow on the Twin Cities, so the sun reflecting off of all that white floods the room with clear light. …
the weird world of trolls…feast on some Scandinavian lore!
I have long loved a good troll yarn. I guess it’s the ancient Viking blood in me! These massive, usually dim-witted creatures with any number of heads and toes, pop up everywhere in Norse folklore adding spice to the story and …
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a sprinkling of Scandinavian Christmas stories
Because my roots are in Sweden and Finland, I’m quite partial to Christmas stories coming from the Scandinavian region. Previously I’ve posted some of my favorites, which you can find via the links at the end of today’s post. Today …
Bicycling to the Moon…fiction from Finland
I don’t see many books coming our way from Finland. Tove Jansson’s Finn Family Moomintroll collection is, of course, the five-star exception, but even those were originally written in Swedish, Jansson being a Swedish-speaking Finn. Here, courtesy of Gecko Press, …