What began as an informal group of volunteer literary translators, armed with the intent to promote globally diverse books for young readers, is now primed to take its mission to greater heights. This month, World Kid Lit is putting down roots as a U.K.-based Community Interest Company, allowing the team to expand its reach through fundraising campaigns, educational grants, and additional opportunities for training events. The new direction coincides with the organization’s annual World Kid Lit Month this month, when the call for more inclusive reading is recognized across the world.
Humble Beginnings
Founded eight years ago, World Kid Lit was the brainchild of Alexandra Buchler, translator and head of Literature Across Frontiers; Marcia Lynx Qualey, translator and editor of ArabLit.org; and Lawrence Schimel, a literary translator and bilingual author. The geographically separated trio (with Buchler in Wales, Qualey in Morocco, and Schimel in Spain) joined forces to advocate for greater attention to translated children’s literature. Through a series of dedicated blog and social media posts, the team evolved into a stable group of volunteer educators, librarians, and publishing professionals, but was limited by a lack of financial resources that would enable it to flourish.
“One of the things we’ve struggled with was how to remain independent—and also, with such a far-flung steering committee and network of volunteers, where in the world a more formal identity would be based,” said Schimel. The time investment that was needed to help grow World Kid Lit’s platform also proved challenging, since most of those volunteers were juggling efforts with their paid freelance work.
One of those individuals was Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp, a longtime translator whose background in Arabic children’s literature led her to the World Kid Lit team. With more than 20 years of experience working with three languages (including German and Russian) and more than a decade in publishing—not to mention co-founding her educational business Babel Babies with Cate Hamilton—Kemp rolled up her sleeves by working on World Kid Lit’s blog in 2018 and began to enlarge its presence and participation.
“We started with just Marcia and me on the blog and Chinese translator Helen Wang on Twitter,” she told PW. “Now we’re a team of 15 regular volunteers and a much bigger pool of regular contributors.” Literature and literacy advocates have joined the ranks of participating librarians, educators, and children’s publishing professionals, who span the globe, from Australia, Bolivia, Canada, Finland, India, Morocco, New Zealand, Nigeria, Spain, the U.K., and the United States.
To date, the team has published more than 500 blog posts, ranging from book reviews and themed book lists, to interviews with book creators and features on global reading and its place in schools and libraries. “With no legal structure to apply for funding or be paid for events, we’ve existed until now as a sort of recommendation service, matchmaking translators or speakers for events, or introducing publishers to bilingual readers. But we’ve always been limited in what we can do as an organization ourselves,” Kemp said.
Green-Lit for Global Growth
Now, with World Kid Lit’s official CIC status, the organization can apply for grant funding and can fundraise, while also hosting ticketed events and selling products such as World Kid Lit merchandise and book bundles for schools. Kemp likens this hybrid structure to a cross between a profit-making company and a charity, where profits are reinvested into projects and programming that benefit its community of young readers. Professional development training for librarians and educators, another key component, will also be fueled by fundraising efforts. “We hope to work with more universities on training [their] library and teaching staff on diversifying their bookshelves and their curriculum planning,” Kemp added.
This month marks an important time for World Kid Lit to further promote its endeavors and focus on outreach and networking, as the organization shares its free online resources with readers around the world. World Kid Lit also expects to begin crowdfunding and seeking out philanthropic donors who will aid in its mission. “We are still very young as a CIC and have a lot of work ahead of us in establishing our funding streams,” Kemp said, adding that donations can be made online.
In the meantime, the organization takes pride in the work it has accomplished thus far, helping to support a more diverse literary landscape. “We live in a globalized world and are slowly having better access to children’s titles from around the globe,” Schimel said. “WKL has helped that, providing a platform for publishers and translators to find or present projects. And one of the growth areas for WKL will be to further help librarians and educators with resources, now that more titles in translation into English are being published year after year.”
