kids books and the dutch writers behind them

Growing up our favorite Bible stories were read to us from these small paper back books. Each little book told a Bible story with vibrant painted colors and large earthy figures. We loved them. The characters were very human and very alive. The text was simple, we had them in English and French as I remember. I think I even learned to read using some of these books. So, a few months I popped in to a Christian bookstore in town and immediately identified the same illustrations on a cover in the kid's section. On closer inspection I found the exact illustrations, this time bound in a larger volume of stories and it hit me, the author/illustrator is dutch! Kees de Kort. I promptly bought the book and have been enjoying reading them now in dutch. Check them out below:


jesus and his followers

road to emmaus

abraham and the promise

david and goliath

And then the other day I was in Ohio with a friend at a little girl's one year old birthday. We bought her Mo Willem's famous "Knuffle Bunny" books. The 3rd and last book is about the same little girl from the first two but this time she goes to Holland to visit her grandma and grandpa (opa and oma) and as I'm flipping through I realize.. this author has to be dutch! Why didn't I see it before. "Knuffel" in dutch means "hug" and it's pronounced not with a soft "k" but instead like "ka-nuf-al" and in English we say "nuffle". I flipped to the front just to be sure and yep, "Willems" is a hard core dutch name. I feel witty and smart when I discover things like this... so there I was in the middle of the party chuckling to myself like I just uncovered a little secret (which I'm sure most people realized before I did).



So to complete my random blog entry I would say that dutch children's writers/illustrators may have the corner on the kid's lit market. Hurrah for the lovely language of double "e" words.