The Adventures of Shola

LoveReading4Kids Says

Winner of the Marsh Award for Children's Literature in Translation, awarded biennially since 1996, was founded to celebrate the best translation of a children’s book from a foreign language into English and published in the UK. It aims to spotlight the high quality and diversity of translated fiction for young readers.

Translated by Margaret Jull Costa.

Shola is surely one of the most irresistible characters in children’s books! The outside world sees a small, white dog but Shola thinks she is much more than that, nothing less than a highly cultivated creature, with the world at her feet. Her long-suffering companion (don’t ever call him her owner) Senor Grogo puts up with this very patiently, for the most part anyway: Shola’s refusal to admit to any mistake occasionally, and understandably, provokes an outburst! The mismatch between Shola’s staunch self-belief and reality produce all sorts of comic situations in the four different stories contained in this volume. Everyone will have their favourite Shola moment – maybe when she decides she’s really a lion, or when she leads a pack of hunting dogs after wild boar in the mistaken belief that boar are just like sheep, only bigger. Her delight in language entertains too, there’s nothing she likes more than using words like ‘obligation’ or ‘discombobulate’. Thoroughly charming, Shola deserves to be much better known. 

Andrea Reece

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