Tjibbe Veldkamp

Tjibbe Veldkamp (b. 1962) has written both for the very youngest readers and for young adults, and everything he writes is well worth reading. He studied psychology in Groningen and then started writing for children. Even his most serious work has always remained fresh and direct, perhaps in part because he also writes for the weekly Donald Duck comic. He worked with Kees de Boer to create the hilarious Agent en Boef (Cop and Robber) series. For teens and older readers, he wrote the incisive SMS, the gritty Tiffany Dop, the nerdy book for high-school boys De lachaanval (The Laughing Attack) and the thriller De lovebus (The Love Bus).

SMS

(Lemniscaat, 2006, 95 pages)

How does a young family cope with the dramatic loss of a mother? Tjibbe Veldkamp has written a touching story about this subject. Mother Annabel has been dead for some time and Bas is driven crazy by his dad Door (he’s as big as one), who can’t let her spirit rest in peace. Door tries to make contact with her and doesn’t hesitate to involve the weirdest methods and people in the process. In his quest to find his dead wife, he forgets his sons Bas and Bobo. Together, the boys try to lead some kind of a normal life by going to school and getting their hands on food in most unconventional ways!

Catfish

(Querido Kind, 2018, 304 pages)

Exciting, funny and amazingly well written: there are few Dutch writers who can combine these elements as well as Tjibbe Veldkamp. In his economical and crystal-clear sentences, he deftly transforms the ordinary life of a highschool student into a thriller.

But First I Caught a Monster

(Lemniscaat, 2020, 32 pages)

‘This is a short story,’ is the first sentence of a surprising and innovative read-aloud picture book in which writer Tjibbe Veldkamp uses the age-old technique of accumulation to create an ingenious tale that just gets funnier and funnier.

Author

Tjibbe Veldkamp

SMS

Catfish

But First I Caught a Monster

Translations

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