(2) 4-6 Translated by Wanda Boeke. After his mother enters a mental hospital and his father goes off with a girlfriend, thirteen-year-old Rits is parked with depressed, neglectful Uncle Corry. Three activities help Rits survive his traumatic summer: writing in his journal, making movies with his video camera, and hanging out with forthright Rita. Rits's matter-of-fact sturdiness and sense of humor make the story funny, buoyant, and moving.

Reviewer: Sarah Ellis | Horn Book Magazine Issue: July, 2008

(3) YA Translated by Wanda J. Boeke. It's been three months since Mone was conscripted, and ten-year-old Bing misses his big brother terribly. To make Mone proud, Bing begs soccer star Dani to train him. But Dani refuses--despite the dirt Bing has on him. The 1930s Belgium setting and certain backstory details are subtly conveyed, possibly eluding readers, but Moeyaert's themes and shocking conclusion are intense and haunting.

Reviewer: Tanya D. Auger

(4) YA Translated by Wanda Boeke. As this novel, translated from the Dutch, opens, the narrator's brother hits their mother's boyfriend with the family car; the reason--the man has been abusing him--isn't divulged until the book's second quarter. The enduringly confusing story line is unfortunate, as Moeyaert's sympathetic narrator has a clear, distinctive voice. Readers who hang in there get to know her dysfunctional family, which exists in a social and cultural vacuum.

Reviewer: Nell Beram

(4) YA Translated by Wanda Boeke. Photographs by Pieter Kers. Eighteen Netherlanders ages fourteen to twenty relay the circumstances (typically parental abuse and neglect) that led them to live independently, in reform school, or in foster, youth, or transition homes. The first-person narratives, based on interviews, are intriguing but provide only an abbreviated sense of who these young people are. The black-and-white photos of the book's subjects are dark and grainy but artful.

Reviewer: Nell Beram

(3) 4-6 Translated by Wanda Boeke. Illustrated by Annemarie van Haeringen. Back for a third set of charming, imaginative stories is the temperamental witch, who certainly makes life lively, if not always pleasant, for the animals inhabiting the forest with her. The hare, the owl, the blackbird, and especially the hedgehog often provoke her in comical ways, but when she goes too far and makes them mad at her, she realizes how much their friendship matters.

Reviewer: Christine M. Heppermann