Girl Who Learned All The Languages Of The World

Ieva Flamingo (the pen name of Ieva Samauska) is one of the most prolific Latvian children’s authors writing today. She has been a journalist at various newspapers and magazines for over twenty years, and for the last ten years has worked at Ieva, Latvia’s biggest weekly magazine. She won the Pastariņš Prize for Latvian Children’s Literature in 2015 and her books have been nominated for the International Jānis Baltvilks Baltic Sea Region Award four times. Her first collection of lyrical poems, Kā uzburt sniegu/How to conjure up snow (liels un mazs, 2006), was adapted for the Latvian National Theatre in 2007. Ieva lives in Saldus, a small town in Latvia, with her family, three cats and a white dog. Chein Shyan Lee is an illustrator based in Malaysia. She is a graduate of Birmingham City University, with a BA (Hons) in Visual Communications, specialising in illustration. Her interests include children’s book illustration, editorial, reportage drawing, branding, printmaking and embroidery. Her work reflects her persistence and attention to detail. Her illustrations featured in Once Upon A Time In Birmingham: Women Who Dared To Dream, a collection of real-life stories about inspirational Birmingham women, published by the Emma Press in 2018. You can find her on Instagram @cheinshyanŽanete Vēvere Pasqualini is a translator and literary agent. She graduated from the Faculty of Foreign Languages, University of Latvia, in 1995, at the same time completing a course in Italian language at the University of Perugia.She was the first Latvian Consul in Rome after Latvia regained independence, and now divides her time between Latvia and Italy. She currently she works as a literary agent for Latvia, promoting Latvian literature abroad and dedicating some of her time to literary translation. In her translations, Žanete enjoys the challenge of rendering the text precisely while keeping the target language as natural and flowing as possible. Her translations into English include: novel “The Green Crow” by Kristīne Ulberga (Peter Owen Press); the short stories “The Birds of Ķīpsala island” by Dace Rukšāne and “The Shakes” by Svens Kuzmins (anthologised in “The Book of Riga”, Comma Press); children’s poetry “The Noisy Classroom” by Ieva Flamingo (Emma Press); the children’s book “Dog Town” by Luīze Pastore (Firefly); “Minimisms” by Imants Ziedonis (Viegli), and the play “History Research Commission” by Alvis Hermanis and company (Jaunais Rīgas Teātris).

'The book will appeal to confident readers in primary school years 4-6, aged 8-11, particularly those who love discovering new words. In literacy lessons, this book would be a great left-field choice for a class reader or book club text. It is well-suited for reading aloud and will be a hit with children who like the sounds of new and unusual words.'