Books

Directory of Translators

Grants Awarded

Grants

Discover

About the Foundation

Catalogues

Contact

Discover our fiction titles

Fiction

The best non-fiction from the Netherlands

Non-fiction

Recently published Children's Books

Children's Books

Browse through our selections

A complete list of titles in our database

All Books

Books & Authors

Find an accredited literary translator in your language

Searchable bibliography of translations from the Dutch

Translation Database

How to get accredited as a literary translator

Sign Up as a Translator

Translators

All possibilities for financial support

An overview of recently awarded translation grants

Our current residencies for international writers and translators

Residencies

Mission statement and general info

Frequently Asked Questions

Meet the team

Departments and staff

Latest news

What's happening

Get in touch

Our activities and projects

Programs

Discover who we are and what we do

About Us

Göteborg 2027

After a short period as a primary-school teacher, she studied psychology. Bette now teaches people how to write stories for picture books. Her other great passion is music. She sings and writes lyrics for the music that her partner composes. Westera is one of the Netherlands’ top poets for children. Together with illustrator Sylvia Weve, she created the poetry collections Doodgewoon (2014) and Uit elkaar (2019), which were showered with prizes.

Dead Simple

Scram! I’m Not Your Gran!

Grandma’s Junk Room

Breaking Up

More Bette Westera

Author

Authors

Children's books

Asset

Assets

Bette Westera

Bette Westera has taken on Lagerlöf’s Swedish classic. She writes smoothly and skilfully, while maintaining the fairy-tale atmosphere of the magical journey of the badly behaved Nils, who has been transformed into a ‘tomte’. Martijn van der Linden’s realistic landscape pictures and close-ups of Nils and main characters such as Martin the goose and Smirre the fox cleverly take the place of the lengthy descriptions omitted by Westera. This adaptation has correctly sensed that the original story is in essence about a growing child who, because he lives with animals, is confronted with the beauty, harshness and freedom of nature, and the universal question of what it means to be human. Nils, who often misses ‘his familiar life as a human child’, learns from Akka, the leader of the geese, that being human comes with great responsibility and that respect for life and nature among his fellow humans cannot be taken for granted. Westera’s Nils is touchingly believable and human. This makes his exciting adventure unforgettable.

Quote

Quotes

How wonderful that this retelling has been published. Bette Westera has once again made it into a delightfully readable story. And combined with illustrations by Martijn van der Linden, this is a stunning book!

Book

Nils Holgersson is part of a series of legendary characters that many people know and love. The red-capped elf who crosses Sweden on the back is an icon. He owes his immortality to the sense of adventure and the imaginative language of Selma Lagerlöf, as seen once again in these beautiful new adaptation of The Wonderful Adventures of Nils Holgersson (1906).

The Wonderful Adventures of Nils Holgersson

Privacy statement

post@letterenfonds.nl