News

A hilarious collaboration of two celebrated children’s authors, Malin Klingenberg and Sanna Mander, has started its journey around the world. Life of Fart (2019) has immediately caught the eye of foreign publishers and has now been sold to Pushkin Press in UK and Rabén & Sjögren in Sweden.

Life of fart is an honest verse book that takes the young readers on a fun adventure exploring a phenomenon that many adults find tricky to talk about without getting embarrassed. With its vivid language and hilarious illustrations the book is a delight to the children who are constantly pondering curiosities of our daily life that no one is willing to explain to them.

Mander’s earlier collaboration (in 2018) with Anna Sarve was a huge success: she made an entrance into nonfiction with an adorable, colourful and intriguing The Spectacular Book of Princesses. The book has recently been published in Hungary and already gained some exciting reviews!

Meanwhile, Klingenberg’s quirky and funny six-book series for the middle grade readers, The Senior Squad , praised for its crazy humour and action-filled plot sold over 11,000 copies in Finland so far.

Congratulations to both authors! World conquer begins!

We are happy about the ever increasing number of quality Finnish literature published in Turkey!

We have recently sold Turkish rights for Anna Härmälä’s charmingly curious travel book for the smallest ones, Postcards From Grandma Flyaway, and adventurous children fantasy series Rotation by Vuokko Hurme.

Postcards From Grandma Flyaway is an inventive and light-hearted book that tells a story of a journey around the world in postcards. Looking at the details of the postcards, children and adults together can try to guess where Granny Flyaway will travel next! Even before it was published, the book has gained a lot of attention from abroad and was praised for its warm illustrations. Turkish rights have been sold to Dinozor Çocuk | Ayrıntı Yayınları.

Rotation is a new fantasy series with two books published accordingly in 2017 and 2018: Upside Down and Right-Side Up. It tells about the adventures of Lenna and her best friend Jaan, and their life in Kardum city; the incident that everyone refers to as “The Rotation” has changed everything, but people have learned to get along in their upside down world. But the supply of fresh water begins to run out. Will they have the courage to look for a future in another world that may be somewhere below them – in the sky? Turkish rights of the series have been sold to one of the leading publishing houses in the country, CAN.

Congratulations to the authors! Stay tuned for some more exciting news in our August Newsletter!

Selja Ahava’s novel Things that Fall from the Sky has been sold to Citic in China. Citic is the 19th publisher of the novel, which was most recently published in English by Oneworld.

There are also offers from France and Sweden on the table, meaning that the book will soon have traveled to 21 countries after its publication in 2015.  

Citic is one of the biggest Chinese publisher’s with an ambitious list of authors, including Michael Chabon, Guillermo Arriaga, Antonio Lobo Antunes, Anthony Doerr,  Esi Edugyan, Elizabeth Kostova, Wally Lamb, Madeline Miller, Arto Paasilinna, Richard Russo and Jill Santopolo. 

Chinese rights were sold by our partners Grayhawk Agency.

Read more about Things that Fall from the Sky here.

(Author photo by Liisa Valonen)

We are continuing our creative literary interviews series with HLA’s writers! This time, it’s Mirjam Lohi, the author of the warm and cheerful Mrs Suominen Arranges series. Find out here how Mrs Suominen was born and what profession Mirjam would not like to do.

Photo: Heli Sorjonen

We are continuing our creative literary interviews series with HLA’s writers! This time it’s Johanna Laitila, the author of the enchanting Lilium regale. Find out here what’s exceptional to Northern Finnish writers and what Lilium regale tells about its reader. And of course, the entertaining questionnaire!

Photo: Marek Sabogal