Since its development in 2024, Stories on the Move has run two pilot projects in partnership with industry professionals, trainee teachers on the PGCE programme in modern foreign languages, and secondary schools in the Reading area. These projects have offered local students opportunities to work on creative translation projects, receive training in key skills used in children’s book publishing, and gain work experience.
Pilot 1: Translating L’Ennemi (2024-2025)
This project ran from April 2024 through to June 2025, and involved over five schools from the Reading area. In partnership with Patricia Billings (Outside in World/ Milet Publishing), Clare Storey (Translator/ World Kid Lit), Rafaela Lemos (Translator/ Moonbug Entertainment), Cristofere Fila (Lantana) and Georgia Wall (The Emma Press), the Stories on the Move team delivered a series of workshops with Y10 French and Spanish pupils, exploring why we translate stories, what happens to them in translation, and engaging in creative ways with stories in multiple languages.
Preparatory classroom sessions used the English, Spanish and Italian translations of Serge Bloch and Davide Cali’s powerful picturebook L’Ennemi (2007, 2016) as a springboard for studying the many elements of story-telling for children that can be translated (title, front cover, illustrations, text, book design, fonts etc) and how they change the ways we interpret the book. Comparing different translations we asked how they change who we think is the enemy? How do different cultures and countries commemorate wars? And last, is this a book about war or peace? Or something more?
On campus workshops were structured around skills sessions led by publishing and creative industries professionals to scaffold pupils’ creative responses to the book. Working in teams, pupils then took on different roles and worked on various publishing tasks, including: developing an editorial vision for the book, writing blurbs and one-line hooks/ translating and adapting sample content/ pitching content and ideas for the book/ designing marketing strategies for the book in translation.
Pilot 2: Translating and Publishing Poetry for Young Readers – Cuando fuiste nube/ When you were a cloud, with the Emma Press (2026)
In this second iteration of the project, we teamed up with indie publisher The Emma Press to work with them on their forthcoming publication of the imaginative and playful collection of poems by author María José Ferrada and illustrator Azul López Cuando fuiste nube, translated as When you were a cloud by Lawrence Schimel.
We involved Y10 Spanish students in two schools from Reading to learn about the translation and editorial process through a hands-on work experience project. Scaffolding sessions focused on reading the book together, and creative translation sessions. We then brought the pupils onto campus to work with Georgia Wall, acting director of the Emma Press. She gave them their brief: to do a deep dive into the book and identify what they found special about it, and so who might want to read it – and then devise ways to get this book to those readers. Working in teams and taking on different strategic roles, the pupils came up with an amazing array of ideas: designing bookmarks, tote bags, care packages, sensory experiences, and music playlists to inspire people to read the book.
The invitation to the book launch co-designed with pupils can be found here.
