Author: Chiara Stanziani

Exciting news for our children’s list: The Mystery of Raspberry Hill by Eva Frantz is travelling to Norway, where it will be published by Mangschou.

This is the 8th deal for this spooky title, which has also been adapted to the screen.

The book follows Stina, a young girl who is sent to the sanatorium of Raspberry Hill to cure her illness. Raspberry Hill is in the middle of the healing countryside, where city dwellers with lung diseases end up. Many of the child patients treated there are from poor families – like Stina. The sanatorium feels like a castle to Stina. It is vast and full of long corridors and echoes. It is also a very lonely place, until one day Stina meets Ruben. The boy starts turning up when they should be sleeping, taking her on nightly expeditions to forbidden parts of the building – like the eastern wing, which has recently burned down.

Little by little Stina starts to realize that everything is not quite right in the sanatorium. Why isn’t her mother writing back to her? Why do the nurses seem so afraid? What really happened in the fire? And what is Ruben trying to warn her about?

Raspberry Hill is crime author Eva Frantz’s first children’s book – a suspenseful horror story for middle grade readers. It starts a series of stand-alone horror novels set in early 20th century that take their young readers on a journey back in time. The book was awarded Runeberg Junior Prize in 2019.

Warm congratulations to the author!

Fantastic news for our author Marja Kyllönen: she has been awarded the Distinguished Artist Award by the Kalevala Society Foundation. The jury have motivated their choice as follows:

“Marja Kyllönen’s (b. 1975) third novel, The Undeparted (Teos 2022), is a kind of generational novel about the transgenerational effects of individual actions and emotions. The most significant and distinctive element of Kyllönen’s narrative is the language she has developed. She combines images, words and parables from folklore, magic, dialects, Kalevala and Kanteletar into her language. When existing words are not enough, she develops new ones that fit naturally into the narrative. Kyllönen builds a language that has never been seen before in fiction. The Undeparted is a valuable addition to the union of Finnish folklore and fiction. Themes familiar from folklore are implanted in the world of contemporary readers, mainly in a style that can be described as magical-lyrical. It is a feat that is unlikely to be matched by anyone else.”

Warm congratulations to the author!

Finnish poetry on stage at the Frankfurt book fair.

The project Poets of Today – Voices of Tomorrow is taking Finnish poetry to the Frankfurt book fair opening this Tuesday. The project is a joint venture by Slovenian, Polish, Hungarian, Serbian and Finnish poets and organisations, and it aims to bring poetry to young people, teachers and local communities in all partner countries. In all these countries, the project includes is one central poet, a team and 10 young poets.

An anthology of poems by the central poets of the five countries will be published, including 25 poems in seven different languages – also in English and in German.

The Finnish poetry programme in Frankfurt consists of the following events:

Wednesday 18th October at 18.00, a Finnish language poetry meeting at the Finnish Assembly, Carl-Goerdeler-Straße 1A, Frankfurt am Main

Thursday 19th October at 19.30, an international poetry meeting at Internationales Theather Frankfurt

On Saturday 21st October, an international poetry meeting at the Frankfurt Book Fair, Finnish stand 4.1 B 35

On Saturday 21st October, a Finnish language poetry meeting at the Frankfurt Book Fair, Finnish stand 4.1 B 35

Information of the programme of different countries in the project can be found on the Facebook page for Poets of Today – Voices of Tomorrow here.

Sanna Pelliccioni has been awarded the Plaque Award by Biennal of Illustrations Bratislava for her illustrations in children’s picture book Sent Across The Sea.

The international jury has chosen Sanna Pelliccioni’s illustrations to Sent Across the Sea as the winner of the Plaque Award. The jury emphasizes the tender, nuanced illustrations that transmit the feeling to the reader. “Pelliccioni’s delicate, mostly rosy and light blue colouring makes the book an artistic whole with its own aesthetics.”

Pelliccioni’s award is the first one granted to a Finnish illustrator by The Biennal of Illustrations Bratislava (BIB) in 35 years. The Bratislava Biennal is the largest exhibition and competition of illustrations in the whole of Europe, and it is organized by IBBY, the International Board of Books for Young People.

The book, written by author Eppu Nuotio, follows Heidi, who must leave home and travel far across the sea to be safe from the war. In the new country Heidi is separated from her brother and ends up living with a grumpy couple. Heidi can’t understand the language of her new aunt and uncle, but she does understand they’d want her to act differently.

Luckily, Heidi gets to spend a day with her brother and his family, and the brother immediately understands that Heidi needs to find a nicer auntie.

Based on real memories, Sent across the Sea is a story of an often-forgotten period in Finnish history: Around 80,000 children were evacuated from Finland during the Second World War, mainly to Sweden. Most of them returned home, but more than 15‚000 did not. In a Europe at war, their story resonates again.

Several HLA authors are currently invited at the Bratislava Biennale Of Illustrations, an event for illustrations from all over the world in the Slovakian capital. You can read more about the event here.

Our authors and illustrators Maija Hurme, Sanna Pelliccioni, Hannamari Ruohonen, Ilja Karsikas, Anne Vasko and Maria Sann are participating and we wish them the very best of luck!