UK children missing out on foreign books, says author

Millions of children are missing out on the best books in the world because so few are translated into English, according to award-winning author David Almond.

The novelist, whose book Skellig won the Carnegie Medal in 1998, said more needed to be done to bring international best-sellers to this country after figures showed translated fiction accounts for less than 3 per cent of all books sold in the UK.

Almond said: “There is very little translated children’s fiction published in the UK, and our children are missing out.”

He said the launch of a new publishing imprint by Pushkin books, which will concentrate solely on international children’s fiction, including the Vitello series from Denmark, was “a bold new venture”.