Crisscrossing the Globe: a World of International Books for Young People is an article in the 2/1/2010 issue of School Library Journal describing USBBY’s 2010 Outstanding International Books list. Written by Elizabeth Poe, the article includes annotations for all the books recognized. The outstanding lineup of titles includes My Little Round House (selected for the Spirit of PaperTigers book set donation project), Sopa de Frijoles, Wanting Mor, Hannah’s Winter, Tales from Outer Suburbia, and more.

This annual list is one of the activities of USBBY, the US chapter of IBBY, the International Board on Books for Young Readers, whose aim is to promote international understanding and good will through books for children and young adults. A goal very much in line with PaperTigers’ own.

And speaking of USBBY, the organization is currently seeking applicants for the 2011 Bridge to Understanding Award. The award recognizes a program that promotes reading as a way to expand a child’s world. Any organization (such as schools, libraries, clubs, scout troops), within the United States, that has a program for children using books and reading as a way of promoting an understanding of cultures/countries outside the United States is eligible to apply. The selection committee will consider such criteria as the number of children reached by the program and the impact on the community as demonstrated by publicity coverage or anecdotal evidence. To be considered for the 2011 award, the program must occur during 2010. Download an application, or visit the website for more information.

Today the organizers of The Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, given annually to books and works that reflect the spirit of Astrid Lindgren, have announced the 168 candidates nominated for the 2010 award (to download the nomination list as a pdf, click here).

The list of writers, illustrators, oral storytellers and literacy-related organizations, working in various literary traditions and languages, represents more than 60 countries and is a treasure trove of talent and commitment to books and reading.

In addition to author Allen Say and author/promoter of literacy Greg Mortenson, proudly nominated by us, the list includes, among many others, New Zealander author Margaret Mahy; Australian Hazel Edwards; South African Niki Daly; Mongolian writer/poet/promoter of reading Dashdondog Jamba and Filipino illustrator Albert Gamos. And for organizations promoting reading and literacy, it lists IBBY International; Room to Read, in the U.S.; Filipino publishing house Adarna; La Fundación Riecken from Guatemala, and many more.

Considering all these strong candidates, it looks like the jury members have their work cut out for them. Their decision will be a hard one to reach—but reach it they will (and expertly so)! The winner or winners will be announced in Vimmerby, Sweden (the birthplace of Astrid Lindgren) on March 24, 2010, and the announcement will be broadcast live to the Bologna Children’s Book Fair, in Italy (which next year will take place March 23-25).

Started in 1967, International Children’s Book Day takes place on or around Hans Christian Andersen’s birthday, April 2nd, and is celebrated to inspire a love of reading and to call attention to children’s books. The event is sponsored by IBBY, The International Board on Books for Young People, a non-profit organization which represents an international network of people from all over the world who are committed to bringing books and children together. Each year a different National Section of IBBY has the opportunity to sponsor International Children’s Book Day, deciding on a theme and inviting prominent talents from their country to work on a message and design a poster. These materials are used in different ways to promote books and reading. Many IBBY Sections promote ICBD through the media and organize activities in schools and public libraries. Often ICBD is linked to celebrations around children’s books and other special events that may include encounters with authors and illustrators, writing competitions or announcements of book awards.

The 2009 sponsor of International Children’s Book Day is EBBY – The Egyptian Section of IBBY and the theme this year is “I am the World.” Illustrator and storyteller Hani D. El-Masri designed the poster. Click the images below to enlarge the poster and read Mr. El-Masri’s message and biography.
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IBBY‘s January Newsletter highlights an exciting project

to enhance friendship between Turkish & Greek children through picture books.

The project ran from March 2007 to June 2008 and worked with 7-8 year olds in both countries. The children explored each other’s cultures through picture books and exchanged letters, photographs and gifts. One of the books they used was the the trilingual (Greek, Turkish and English) A Bridge of Sea by Greek poet Lia Karavia and Turkish writer and illustrator Serpil Ural:

With its message of understanding between people of different backgrounds, the book aims at promoting peace and friendship between Turks and Greeks.

Together, the Greek and Turkish IBBY Sections

proved that children’s books can be used as a tool for better understanding of the other, thus easing the way for peace in the area.

Once again, we see the potential of children’s books to change the world:

a bridge of books can be built among neighbouring countries. Such bridges can go all around the world creating passages to friendship and peace.

PaperTiger’s current issue features an excellent interview with internationally acclaimed author, humanitarian and peace activist, Deborah Ellis. Deborah has traveled the world to meet with children affected by poverty, war, racism and illness and to hear their stories. Her fiction and non-fiction books give us a glimpse into the lives of children from Afghanistan (The Breadwinner Trilogy), Bolivia (I am a Taxi, Sacred Leaf), the Middle East (Three Wishes: Palestinian and Israeli Children Speak) and Southern Africa (The Heaven Shop).

Deborah’s latest book, Off To War: Voices of Soldiers’ Children is a collection of interviews with children of Canadian and American soldiers serving in Afghanistan and Iraq. Her next book, Children of War: Voices of Iraqi Refugees, is due out in March, 2009. Royalties from both books are to be donated to the Children in Crisis Fund of IBBY. This Fund is a program designed to bring books to children whose lives have been disrupted through war, civil disorder or natural disaster. The two main activities supported by the Fund are the therapeutic use of books and storytelling in the form of bibliotherapy, and the creation or replacement of collections of selected books that are appropriate to the situation. IBBY hopes that the program will not only provide immediate support and help, but that it will also make a long- term impact in the communities, thus supporting IBBY’s goal of giving every child the Right to Become a Reader.

Tomorrow, January 23rd, from 7:30 – 9pm, Deborah and Groundwood Books, in partnership with USBBY, are presenting a special fundraising event for the Children in Crisis Fund at the ALA Midwinter Conference in Denver, Colorado. Attendees will hear Deborah reflect on her conversations with the children whose words and experiences are shared in her most recent books and will have the opportunity to chat with her. Patsy Aldana, president of IBBY and publisher of Groundwood Books, will speak briefly about the IBBY bibliotherapy programs already underway. Signed copies of Deborah’s books will be for sale and all proceeds from the event will go to the Children in Crisis Fund.

This week we have watched with shock and horror the events unfold in Mumbai, India . Our sympathies go out to all those affected by the tragic events, especially the children. Last week I posted about Bookaroo – India’s first ever festival of children’s literature. The event was a huge success and organizers had hoped to take the event to Mumbai in the New Year. Now it remains to be seen if that will happen.

Our new issue of PaperTigers focuses on the timely themes of war, peace and social justice in relation to children’s books. How can we help children to cope with the divisiveness and contradictions at play in the world today? How can we help them to feel that they have the power to change things for the better? PaperTigers Managing Editor Aline points out “At no other time in recent history have these themes been more relevant or their challenges more urgent than they are now”. How true!

With the events in India fresh in my mind, I am reminded by a campaign to encourage reading that the Pakistan chapter of IBBY started following the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in 2007. As the country plunged into violence and civil unrest, IBBY Pakistan initiated a poster campaign in an attempt to “counteract the daily subjection of the children to images of terrorism, destruction and despair.” IBBY Pakistan states:

“The aim of the poster campaign is to encourage reading and school attendance, cut the drop-out rate and allow the next generation to move forward out of the current cycle of destruction.The organization is putting every effort into a nationwide poster campaign that will bring children and books together with information, knowledge, and awareness of peace and tolerance towards each other: issues that are often neglected in their lives today. IBBY Pakistan believes that with these methods they can begin to stop what they see as brain washing of the young by the virulent campaign of violence they see around them every day.”

(Click on event name for more information)

Children’s Book Holiday~ Mongolia

Grimm Stuff: Folktales and Fairy Stories Exhibition~ ongoing until Nov 8, Wellington, New Zealand

Book Week~ ongoing until Nov 9, Japan

28th Santiago International Book Fair~ ongoing until Nov 16, Santiago, Chile

The Heart of Innocence: Exhibition of Works for Children by Czech Illustrators~ ongoing until Nov 23, Macau

Children’s Literature Festival~ Nov 1, Keene, NH, USA

The Kennedy Center’s 13th Annual Multicultural Children’s Book Festival~ Nov 1, Washington, D.C., USA

The Once Upon a World Children’s Book Award Festival~ Nov 2, Los Angeles, CA, USA

TD Canadian Children’s Literature Award Winners Announced~ Nov 6, Toronto, ON, Canada

Kaleidoscope Children’s Literature Conference: Bridging Worlds ~ Nov 6 – 8, Calgary, AB, Canada

YALSA’s Young Adult Literature Symposium: How We Read Now~ Nov 7 – 9, Nashville, TN, USA

12th Annual Rochester Children’s Book Festival~ Nov 8, Rochester, NY, USA

17th Annual Connecticut Children’s Book Fair~ Nov 8 – 9, Storrs, CT, USA

National Young Reader’s Day~ Nov 10 – 14, USA

Over Rainbows and Down Rabbit Holes: The Art of Children’s Books Exhibition~ Nov 11 – Mar 8/09, Amherst, MA, USA

28th Indonesia Book Fair~ Nov 12 – 16, Jakarta, Indonesia

National Association for Multicultural Education (NAME) 18th International Conference~ Nov 12 – 16, New Orleans, LA, USA

National Book Week~ Nov 14 – 20, India

IBBY/NCRCL Conference: Ecology, Environment and Children’s Literature~ Nov 15, London, United Kingdom

7th Annual National Pacific Islander Educator Network (NPIEN) Conference~ Nov 15, Paramount, CA, USA

Children’s Book Week: Classic Canadian Reading~ Nov 15 – 22, Canada

National Library Board’s 9th Asian Children’s Festival~ Nov 15 – 23, Singapore

Govenor General’s Literary Award Winners Announced~ Nov 18, Montreal, QC, Canada

26th Annual National Black Storytelling Festival and Conference~ Nov 19 – 23, Cincinnati, OH, USA

Children’s Literature Assembly Events at the National Council of Teachers of English Annual Convention~ Nov 20 – 23, San Antonio, TX, USA

7th Annual International Children’s and Young Adult Literature Celebration~ Nov 22, Madison, WI, USA

Bookaroo: India’s First Ever Festival of Children’s Literature~ Nov 22 – 23, New Delhi, India

Assembly on Literature for Adolescents (ALAN) Workshop: Negotiations & Love Songs:The Literature of Young Adults~ Nov 24 – 25, San Antonio, TX, USA

Salon du Livre et de la Presse Jeunesse: Children’s Books & Magazines~ Nov 26 – Dec 1, France

Guadalajara Book Fair~ Nov 29 – Dec 7, Guadalajara, Mexico

(Click on event name for more information)

Canadian Library Month~ Canada

National Reading Group Month~ USA

Banned Books Week: Celebrating the Freedom to Read~ ongoing until Oct 4, USA

International Children’s and Youth Literature Festival~ ongoing until Oct 4, Berlin, Germany

3rd Annual Cybils (Children’s and Young Adult Bloggers’ Literary Awards) Nominations Open~ Oct 1 – 15

National Young Writers’ Festival~ Oct 2-6, Newcastle, Australia

Boston Globe-Horn Book Awards Ceremony~ Oct 3, Boston, MA, USA

21st Yukon International Storytelling Festival~ Oct 3-5, Whitehorse, YK, Canada

2008 Ceremony of Best Books~ Oct 4, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia

Américas Book Award for Children’s and Young Adult Literature Winners Ceremony~ Oct 4, Washington, D.C., USA

Orange County Children’s Book Festival~ Oct 5, Costa Mesa, CA, USA

Children’s Book Week~ Oct 6-12, United Kingdom

13th Annual New England Conference on Multicultural Education~ Oct 8, Hartford, CT, USA

School Library Journal Webcast: Capturing Struggling Readers and Reluctant Readers~ Oct 8

Book It! Cheltenham’s Children’s Literature Festival~ Oct 10-19, Cheltenham, United Kingdom

18th Monterrey International Book Fair~ Oct 11-19, Monterrey, Mexico

YALSA’s Teen Read Week: Books With Bite @ Your Library~ Oct 12-18, USA

“Multicultural Bites” with authors Mitali Perkins, Coe Booth and An Na (part of ReaderGirlz’s celebration of Teen Read Week)~ Oct 13

Ubud Writers and Readers Festival~ Oct 14-19, Ubud, Bali, Indonesia

Frankfurt Book Fair~ Oct 15-19, Frankfurt, Germany

55th Jane Addams Children’s Book Awards Ceremony~ Oct 17, New York, NY, USA

IBBY Ireland Conference: Green Gables to Globalization: Crossover, Canada and Children’s Books~ Oct 18, Dublin, Ireland

SCBWI Tokyo Writers’ Day~ Oct 18, Tokyo, Japan

Children’s Literature Council Fall Gala~ Oct 18, Santa Ana, CA, USA

Vancouver International Writers Festival~ Oct 21-26, Vancouver, BC, Canada

The Big Picture Party: Celebrate the Power of Picture Books~ Oct 27, London, United Kingdom

Book Week~ Oct 27-Nov 9, Japan

Tomás Rivera Mexican American Children’s Book Awards Ceremony~ Oct 30, San Marcos, TX, USA

28th Santiago International Book Fair~ Oct 31-Nov 16, Santiago, Chile

During our session with the IFLA (International Federation of Libraries Associations and Institutions) in Bologna, both speakers (Patsy Aldana and Viviana Quiñones) stressed the importance of children having access to books which both reflect their experiences and open windows onto other customs and cultures. We were urged to pay a visit to the stand shared by a number of different African publishers, and there we met three very special publishers, all producing books to meet that demand.

The first two were librarians we had met at the session the day before: Antoinette F. Correa from BLD (Bibliothèque-Lecture-Développement) Éditions in Senegal and Pili Dumea of the Children’s Book Project (CBP) for Tanzania.

Antoinette, pictured right with a selection of her books, told me that she set up BLD Éditions to meet the needs of both teachers and pupils, who were crying out for access to good books in their own language. She is a well-known figure in the IFLA, and sees the continued development of libraries as crucial work: as well as publishing books, BLD helps to set up libraries and trains librarians.

Pili, pictured left, is secretary to the CBP for Tanzania, which, again, connects children with books published locally. Last year the CBP was awarded the UNESCO King Sejong Literacy Prize for its work promoting the love of books among children and adults. One eleven-year-old, talking about her school library, following the school’s affiliation to the CBP, said

“I have read most of the books in the school library which helped me learn about different topics through interesting stories told in our own national language, Kiswahili, which is easier to understand than English.”

The third publisher was Bakamé Éditions from Rwanda, who publish children’s books in the national language, Kinyarwanda, which is understood by all Rwandans. They also run various projects to promote reading, including their “Bibliothèque en route” – a rucksack library, which takes books out to children who do not have access to an actual library. It gets a tiny mention on their English pages, but if you read French, there’s more here. Editions Bakamé was the joint recipient of this year’s IBBY-Asahi Reading Promotion Award and this article on IBBY’s website is also an interesting read.

The work these organisations are doing is truly awe-inspiring and it was a real privilege to meet Antoinette and Pili.

In her recent post, Librarians At Bologna – Part 1, Marjorie referred to Patsy Aldana, current president of the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY). This past August, Patsy attended the World Library and Information Congress in Quebec City, Canada and hosted a session entitled All About IBBY – Children In Crisis and Books.

For over 50 decades, IBBY members throughout the world have worked to promote IBBY’s goal that “every child, rich or poor, safe or in danger, with a home or without, has the right to become a reader”. In her presentation, Patsy stressed that every child, everywhere in the world, must have access to books and the opportunity to become a reader in the fullest sense. “Unfortunately”, said Patsy, “this right is not equally available around the world and in most of the poorer countries children don’t have access to many books, much less high quality books. In addition, those children are almost certainly never going to find books that reflect their own lives and cultures”. To help combat this problem, IBBY partnered with Hideo Yamada, a Japanese honey producer and philanthropist, and initiated a five-year programme of workshops in publishing, writing, illustrating, and librarianship in countries that have little or no local publishing. As Patsy says:

Good writing and illustration is not born as such– it is shaped by years of apprenticeship, contact with excellent peers, editors, a market, critics, librarians and, most importantly, receptive, book-loving child readers. We have that kind of expertise through IBBY and, now, thanks to the IBBY-Yamada Fund workshop programme we can share it with others. Our broad network of National Sections means that IBBY, through its dedicated and principled activists, can carry out effective reading projects in many countries that otherwise may not pay children’s reading promotion the attention that is imperative for their growth.

Patsy recapped for the audience the IBBY-Yamada programs that had taken place over the past 2 years in over 25 countries (click here to learn more and see the photos of children benefiting from these programs). Her words, which should echo everywhere: “Reading and books can save lives. They can change lives. They can give children in the most desperate circumstances a way to begin to live again and to understand what has happened to them.” We, at PaperTigers, couldn’t agree more and wish IBBY every success with this endeavor.