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  • Ages 7 and up
  • 21ST CENTURY CLASSICS

Boku wa Afurica ni sumu Kirin to iimasu

[trans. Yours Sincerely, Giraffe]

Written by Iwasa Megumi
Illustrated by Takabatake Jun

Kaiseisha, 2001. 102 pp. ISBN 978-4-03-501040-1.

Also published in: Chinese (traditional and simplified characters), English, German, Greece, Hungarian, Italian, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Thai, Turkish, and Vietnamese

A very bored Giraffe lives in the African savannah. When he learns that Pelican, also rather bored, has started a new mail service, he decides to send a letter to someone. He pens a simple note—“I am Giraffe. I live in Africa. I’m famous for my long neck. Please tell me all about yourself”—and asks Pelican to deliver it to the first animal he meets on the other side of the horizon. After Pelican makes it past the horizon, he meets Seal, who also happens to be delivering mail, and gives him the letter from Giraffe. Seal takes the letter to Penguin, who lives at Whale Point.

    The next day, Pelican arrives back at Giraffe’s home with a reply in hand. Having waited so long that his neck has already grown five more centimeters, Giraffe is eager to find out all he can about his new pen pal. However, Pelican cannot remember the name of the animal he got the reply from—only that it sounded like “Pelican.” On the other side of the horizon, Penguin is puzzled himself: he has no idea what a “neck” is, and Professor Whale’s well-meaning but vague explanation is not much help.

    The two new pen pals thus begin their correspondence knowing hardly a thing about one another, leaving everything to their imaginations. As they write letters back and forth, Giraffe and Penguin start getting funnier and funnier ideas about what the other is like. Their imaginations continue to run wild until the climax of the story, where Giraffe makes himself resemble Penguin as best he can and then heads off to meet him face to face. Giraffe’s skewed idea of what Penguin looks like is simply hilarious.

    Written at a leisurely pace and filled with quirky illustrations, the delightful Yours Sincerely, Giraffe is perfect for children who are just starting to read stories themselves. The book has even spawned five sequels, all telling the stories of different pairs of animal pen pals. The German translation of the book won the children’s book category of the German Children’s Literature Award in 2018. (FY)
『Boku wa Afurica ni sumu Kirin to iimasu』の表紙画像

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Iwasa Megumi

Born in Tokyo in 1958. In 2018, the German translation of her debut work Boku wa Afurica ni sumu Kirin to iimasu became the first Japanese book to win the German Children’s Literature Award. Her literary works include Watashi wa Kujira-misaki ni sumu Kujira to iimasu [trans. Dear Professor Whale], other Kujira kai no ohanashi [The Whale Sea Stories] series (a total of six volumes to date), and Kangarū obasan no okaimono [Aunt Kangaroo’s Shopping].

Takabatake Jun

Born in Aichi Prefecture in 1948. Won the Bologna Children’s Book Fair Graphic Prize, the Japan Picture Book Award, and the Kōdansha Publication Culture Awards Picture Book Award. His picture books include Otōsan no ehon [Father’s Picture Book], Dare no Jitensha [Whose Bicycle], Pīsu rando [Peace Land], Wanwan wan wan [Bow-Wow, Bow-Wow], Futari no namakemono [Two Sloths], Ō suppa [So Sour] written by Koshino Tamio, and Dajare dōbutsuen [The Pun Zoo] written by Nakagawa Hirotaka.

Translation rights inquiries

KAISEI-SHA Publishing Co., Ltd.
(attn. Nonaka Yuko, responsible for Foreign Rights)
Email: foreign@kaiseisha.co.jp
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