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This article was a presentation given at the 2012 IBBY Congress in London, first posted here and developed from a PaperTigers.org Personal View, “Caught up in Conflict: Refugee stories about and for young people“.

A bibliography with links to relevant websites is listed by title can be … Continue reading ... →

The IBBY press conference at the 2013 Bologna Children’s Book Fair will take place March 25 at 2:30 pm. Highlights will include:

~ IBBY Documentation Centre of Books for Disabled Young People
~ IBBY Projects (including the the IBBY Children in Crisis Fund and the IBBY-Yamada Programme)
~ International Children’s Book Day 2013
~ 2013 Selection of Outstanding Books for Young People with Disabilities
~ 2014 Hans Christian Andersen Awards

The United Arab Emirates Section of IBBY (UAEIBBY) will organize the First International Board on Books for Young  People Conference for the Region of Central Asia and North Africa (CANA): Bringing Books and Children Together in Sharjah, UAE,  April 21 – 23, 2013.

The Indonesian Section of IBBY (INABBY) has announced the  1st Asia and Oceania Regional IBBY Congress to be held in Bali, Indonesia, May 23 – 26, 2013.

The USA section of IBBY ( USBBY) is sponsoring the 10th IBBY Regional Conference: BookJoy Around the World in St. Louis, MO,  October 18 – 20, 2013.

IBBY Cuba will be hosting the Congreso Internacional Lectura 2013: para Leer el XXI  to be held October 22 – 26, 2013 in Havana, Cuba.

IBBY India and Association of Writers and Illustrators for Children (AWIC) is organizing The International Conference on Literacy Through Literature to be held in New Delhi, India, February 6 – 8, 2014.

The IBBY 34th International Congress: May everyone really mean everyone. Reading as an inclusive experience will be held in Mexico City, Mexico, September 10 – 13, 2014. Submissions are now being accepted for a special issue of Bookbird to coincide with the Congress. Papers are welcomed that examine texts for children from Mexico or the Latin American world as they relate to or intersect with the conference theme. See Bookbird’s website at www.ibby.org/bookbird for full submission details.

The 33rd IBBY Congress took place this past summer in London and a selection of videos of some of the plenary and other sessions are now available on the Congress website. Click here to watch them. Hopefully PaperTigers Editor Marjorie Coughlan’s session Escaping Conflict, Seeking Peace: picture books that relate refugee stories, and their importance will be uploaded soon so that those of us that couldn’t attend can enjoy her presentation.

It was a real thrill for me to meet not only Dashdondog Jamba at the IBBY Congress last month, having interviewed him last year, but also Anne Pellowski, who worked with him on the Libraries Unlimited edition of Mongolian Folktales.  Here’s a photo of us all:

Dashdondog was a member of a superb storytellers’ panel with Michael Harvey telling a tall tale in a mixture of Welsh and English and Sonia Nimr recounting hers first in English then in Arabic.  It was fascinating in both cases how much audience participation was possible, regardless of the language they were speaking, simply (and of course, not simple at all really) becasue they were such fine storytellers.

Dashdondog’s story-telling in Mongolian was accompanied by a slideshow that provided the necessary context and I loved his verse rendition of the work of the Mongolian Mobile Library that he founded in 1990 – the onomatopeia could be universally understood. You can watch part of it here. As well as his gift for storytelling, this part of Dashdondog’s presentation provided an indication of how committed the Mobile Children’s Library is in ensuring library books reach as many children as possible, regardless of the challenges of terrain, distance and weather conditions they encounter.

Do read Dashdondog’s article about the library here – and you can read some of his vibrant poems translated into English on his blog.

I was touched when Merle Harris from Canada, was excited to meet me because she has been teaching I AM JACK for many years and it’s part of her school curriculum. Their one lonely copy can now be supplemented with I Am Jack being published in the USA (Kane Miller ) at last.  So deeply felt.

Shared with the Director of Library Services, Friends Seminary a Quaker School ‘Ships in the Field’. She’s taking it back to New York for her school.

Brilliant panel with Bart Moeyaert, award winning  Belgium author translated into many languages and iconic Aidan Chambers Hans Christian Andersen Medal award winner and winner of the Carnegie Medal for ‘Postcards from No Man’s Land’.

They are champions of translating literature into English.  Aidan gave some funny examples of mistranslation.

Actually I worry about how my ‘Butterflies’ truly reads in Bahasa (Indonesian) as the book looks cut down and censored. I’d never know.

Finally, so excited about meeting the Slovenian contingent, especially Veronika  Rot  Gabrovec, lectuere University of Ljublijana Slovenia. Veronika teaches Australian literature and knows my Slovenian publisher of ‘I Am Jack’ – just translated.Exciting to connect to the world through literature.

Great to share it with the Australian contingent, Robin Morrow and Jenni Woodroffe from IBBY Australia, and Frane Lessac illustrator exaordinaire.

The flight is sooooooo…. long from Australia. Managed to tip boiling tea on myself and  a blistered leg.

tihad Ailines  gave it a try – and 10 rows of travellers had no entertainment system. No movies – so  it was tough going, although had a diversion with boiling tea!

Good news is that I arrived and LOVE London.

Already did some tourist things from Trafalgar Square to Buckingham Palace.

Rode on a British red bus and a taxi cab and of course the underground.

Had a great meeting with The Rights People – Alex Webb and Rachel Richardson who are taking my  ‘Butterflies’ to the Frankfurt Book Fair.

IBBY Congress starts today and I catch up with Frane Lessac!

The first issue of IBBY Asian Newsletter has come out and is definitely a must read! This newsletter belongs to all national sections in Asia: from the Middle East to the Far East, and contains a wealth of information and photos. Following the decision of the Asian national sections’ gathering at the 2010 IBBY Congress, two issues of this newsletter will be published each year (April and September).

Included in the April 2011 issue are:
• Report from Australia
• IBBY India’s activities
• News from Iran
• JBBY describes its wide ranging activities
• KBBY reports
• Alif Laila Book Bus Society Brings Children and Books Together!
• Palestinian IBBY

The 32nd International IBBY Congress was held in Santiago de Compostela, Spain this past September with the theme The Strength of Minorities:

Why would the majorities want to change a society in which they are perfectly comfortable and privileged? It may seem at a first glance that the majority is the dominant force in every society, but those who dramatically change their world, now and throughout history, always belong to the minority. Minorities –social, ethnic, linguistic, gender, religious- possess a force and an internal dynamism that this Congress will address by critically evaluating and highlighting today’s situation for all minorities. We hope that the Congress will encourage equity that will lead to empowerment of minorities throughout the world.

You can now read the detailed program and speeches from the Congress on-line by clicking  here. Photos from the event can be seen here.

Planning for the 33rd International IBBY Congress in London is already underway. The dates are set for August 23 – 26, 2012 and the theme of the Congress is Crossing Boundaries: Translations and Migrations. Participants will explore how books and stories for children and young people can cross boundaries and migrate across different countries and cultures. The congress will look at issues such as globalization, dual-language texts, cultural exchange and the art of translation. For more information, check out the IBBY 2012 Congress website.

Gita Wolf, publisher and director at Tara Books,  has posted a wonderful entry on the Tara Books Blog entitled The Politics of Voice: Folk and Tribal Art in Children’s Literature in which she talks about her presentation at the recent IBBY Congress:

“It may seem, at first glance, that the majority is the dominant force in every society, but those who dramatically change their world, now and throughout history, always belong to the minority.”  With this motto, the International Board on Books for Young People – IBBY – organized their Congress this year in Santiago de Compostela, Spain. The theme was The Strength of Minorities. Given Tara’s work with folk and tribal art communities, I was invited to contribute, to talk about how these ‘outsider’ artists could change the course of children’s literature.

The fundamental question for me had to do with how we can re-imagine children’s literature. What possibilities are there in a publishing world that is increasingly dominated by big business, bestsellers, and a certain sameness in what we think is suitable for children?

When we started publishing in 1995, there were very few picture books for children in India. Ours has been a largely oral tradition, and the notion of children’s literature came from abroad. So Indian children’s books tended to be derivative. To create something that was original, we looked around for Indian illustrators, and what excited us most was the potential we saw in traditional artists.

To read the rest of the article (which contains some lovely illustrations and images!) click here .

Note: The image above is by Gond artist Bhajju Shyam and is from the book The Flight of the Mermaid, text by Gita Wolf and Sirish Rao (Tara Books, 2009).  Bhajju is currently featured in our PaperTigers Illustrator Gallery.