The Mildred L. Batchelder Award is given annually to an American publisher for the children's book considered to be the most outstanding of those books originally published in a foreign language in a foreign country, and which has been translated into English and published in the United States. It is awarded by the Association of Library Service to Children, a division of the American Library Association. For more information about the Batchelder Award, please see ALSC's Batchelder page.

Current and past winners:

2005: The Shadows of Ghadames by Joëlle Stolz, Delacorte Press/Random House Children's Books, translated from the French by Catherine Temerson.

A vivid picture of a young woman's coming of age in 19th-century Libya, as 11-year-old Malika questions the restrictions she encounters as she approaches marriageable age. When the women of her family secretly aid a wounded outcast, Malika gains a new understanding of the strength of the women of Ghadames, whose seclusion from the men's world of the streets has created a powerful all-female community that extends across the rooftops of the city.

2004: Run, Boy, Run by Uri Orlev, Walter Lorraine Books/Houghton Mifflin Company, translated from the Hebrew by Hillel Halkin.

Based on the true story of a nine-year-old boy who escapes the Warsaw Ghetto and must survive throughout the war in the Nazi-occupied Polish countryside.

2003: The Thief Lord by Cornelia Funke, The Chicken House/Scholastic Publishing, translated from the German by Oliver Latsch.

Two brothers, having run away from the aunt who plans to adopt the younger one, are sought by a detective hired by their aunt, but they have found shelter with--and protection from--Venice's "Thief Lord."

2001: Samir and Yonatan by Daniella Carmi, Arthur A. Levine/Scholastic Press, translated from the Hebrew by Yael Lotan.

Samir, a Palestinian boy, is sent for surgery to an Israeli hospital where he has two otherworldly experiences, making friends with an Israeli boy, Yonatan, and traveling with him to Mars where Samir finds peace over his younger brother's death in the war.

2000: The Baboon King by Anton Quintana, Walker and Company, translated from the Dutch by John Nieuwenhuizen.

Son of a Kikuyu mother and a Masai herdsman father, Morengáru the hunter lives on the edges of tribal society until an actual banishment forces him to make a life for himself among a troop of baboons.

1999: Thanks to My Mother by Schoschana Rabinovici, Dial, translated from the German by James Skofield.

After struggling to survive in Nazi-occupied Lithuania, a young Jewish girl and her mother endure much suffering in Kaiserwald, Stutthof, and Tauentzien concentration camps and on an eleven-day death march before being liberated by the Russian army.

1998: The Robber and Me by Josef Holub, Henry Holt, edited by Mark Aronson and translated from the German by Elizabeth D. Crawford.

A prize-winning adoption novel, "The Robber and Me" is a heartwarming story about the triumph of friendship and the bonds between new-found fathers and sons. Set in 19th-century rural Germany, this timeless novel shows how one orphan boy struggles against a town's prejudice to do what he believes is right.

1997: The Friends by Kazumi Yumoto, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, translated from Japanese by Cathy Hirano.

Curious about death, three sixth-grade boys decide to spy on an old man waiting for him to die, but they end up becoming his friends.

1995: The Boys from St. Petri by Bjarne Reuter, Dutton, translated from Danish by Anthea Bell.

In 1942, a group of young men begin a series of increasingly dangerous protests against the German invaders of their Danish homeland.

1994: The Apprentice by Pilar Molina Llorente, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, translated from Spanish by Robin Longshaw.

Working as an artist's apprentice in Renaissance Florence, thirteen-year-old Arduino makes a discovery which may cost him the chance to become a painter.

1992: The Man from the Other Side by Uri Orlev, Houghton Mifflin Company, translated from Hebrew by Hillel Halkin.

Living on the outskirts of the Warsaw Ghetto during World War II, fourteen-year-old Marek and his grandparents shelter a Jewish man in the days before the Jewish uprising.

1991: A Hand Full of Stars by Rafik Schami, E.P. Dutton, translated from German by Rika Lesser.

A teenager who wants to be a journalist in a suppressed society describes to his diary his daily life in his hometown of Damascus, Syria.

1989: Crutches by Peter Härtling, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard, translated from German by Elizabeth D. Crawford.

A young boy, searching vainly for his mother in post-war Vienna, is befriended by a man on crutches and together they find hope for the future.

1988: If You Didn't Have Me by Ulf Nilsson, McElderry Books, translated from Swedish by Lone Thygesen Clecher & George Blecher.

Spending most of a year with relatives on a farm in southern Sweden while his parents are busy building a new house in town, a young boy finds inner strengths and unexpected sources of entertainment.

1986: Rose Blanche by Christophe Gallaz & Roberto Innocenti, Creative Education, translated from Italian by Martha Coventry & Richard Craglia.

During World War II, a young German girl's curiosity leads her to discover something far more terrible than the day-to-day hardships and privations that she and her neighbors have experienced.

1985: The Island on Bird Street by Uri Orlev, Houghton Mifflin, translated from Hebrew by Hillel Halkin.

During World War II a Jewish boy is left on his own for months in a ruined house in the Warsaw Ghetto, where he must learn all the tricks of survival under constantly life-threatening conditions.

1984: Ronia, the Robber's Daughter by Astrid Lindgren, Viking Press, translated from Swedish by Patricia Crampton.

Ronia, who lives with her father and his band of robbers in a castle in the woods, causes trouble when she befriends the son of a rival robber chieftain.

1983: Hiroshima No Pika by Toshi Maruki, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard, translated from Japanese through Kurita-Bando Literary Agency.

The heartbreaking experiences of seven-year-old Mii and her parents, which began at 8:15 a.m., August 6, 1945, when the atomic bomb "Little Boy" was dropped on the city of Hiroshima.

1982: The Battle Horse by Harry Kullman, Bradbury Press, translated from Swedish by George Blecher & Lone Thygesen Blecher.

The children on a Stockholm street engage in a modern-day jousting tournament in which the rich are knights and the poor are the horses who bear them.

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Jessica Langlois 2005