(Querido Kind, 2006)

Kiek’s father is a doctor with an aid agency and during his last trip to a war zone he disappeared. There’s nothing to be done but wait and hope he’ll be found. Kiek fears her father will die, but her mother says it won’t come to that. After all, how many children does Kiek know with dead fathers? Exactly: just one. The chances of having a dead father must be fairly small.

(Querido Kind, 2007, 120 pages)

Oversteken by Marjolijn Hof is a holiday story full of wonderful images and true-tolife characters, written with great style and an original atmosphere. The protagonist is the eleven-year-old Meta, who gives an honest and open account of her futile attempts to get her mother to stay together with her umpteenth new boyfriend, the Icelander Bjarni. She is a completely ‘ordinary’ girl, but she gains a unique voice, thanks to Hof’s natural and light-hearted writing style and talent for capturing large emotions in small details.

(Querido Kind, 2008, 127 pages)

When Fejzo was eight, he had to fill in the boxes on a form at school to make his family tree. There was only one box for a mother. “I’m adopted,” Fejzo told his teacher, so she allowed him to draw another box for his other mother. He called his biological mother “Mother 1” and his adoptive mother “Mother 2”. “I regretted it straightaway. My mum who’s my mum now had suddenly become number two. I quickly rubbed it all out and filled in the boxes again. In the first box I wrote: Mother 0.

(Querido Kind, 2011, 112 pages)

A grandma who acts like a pig? Is there anyone out there whose imagination that doesn’t appeal to? Or does the title My Grandpa and Me, and Grandma the Pig actually mean something else? What’s for sure is that it was last year’s most intriguing and original title, which revealed that Marjolijn Hof, following the realistic books that brought her awards and fame, is trying out a different style, characterised by quirky imagination and absurd humour.

(Querido Kind, 2013, 120 pages)

Twan and his twin sister, Linde, have gone with their mother and grandmother to Iceland to fetch great-grandfather Kas. He’s been living there for years, but he can no longer look after himself. But Grampy Kas knows that he’ll be unhappy in a Dutch care home. A man likes to die the way he lived, he confides to Twan and Linde. He wants to escape, and head off into the mountains, but he’s going to need his great-grandchildren’s help.