Ivar is twelve years old and has received a crushing message from his parents: the pocket money is turning around, now Ivar has to pay pocket money to mom and dad. From now on, it’s Ivar’s turn to contribute. Now Ivar has to get a summer job, but how does one actually do that? His friend Maja has got a real summer job at a café. She serves soup to guests and folds nice napkins. One day, an annoying boy shows up at the café. His name is Mons. But isn’t Mons just a silly cat name? And why does Mons walk around carrying a silly paddle?

Ivar steps up is a fun and absurd story about pocket money, summer jobs, and best friends who might be growing apart. Kolerud is known for his understated and humorous books for children, teenagers, and adults, and had great success with the children’s book Snillionen / The Million Kroner Kindness Competition in 2017. The book was one of 12 selected books that were presented at the Berlinale film festival in Berlin in February 2018, as particularly suitable for film adaptation.

Arnfinn Kolerud (b. 1968) is from Isfjorden in Romsdal. He made his debut with «Just Don’t Let the Snowplow Come» in 1996, and he received the Ministry of Culture’s debutant prize for children’s and youth literature for this book. Kolerud has been nominated for the Brage Prize and won the Critics» Prize, the New Norwegian Children’s Literature Prize, and the Guro Sandsdalen Literature Prize.

Translation rights sold to: Denmark

Read English sample here