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Vol.
40, No. 3 july, 2002 To
Bookbird Readers Author
Spotlight: Jella Lepman (1891-1970)
The
International Youth Library Today and Tomorrow Global
Connections: Working with IBBY An
IBBY Conversation with Margaret McElderry Global
Connections: Private Healers IBBY
in Africa More
Important Than Ever: Cooperation among the Nordic IBBY Sections Promoting
the Joy of Reading: An Interview with Geneviève Patte Regular
Features Country
Survey: Poland Reading
Promotion: A New World for THE New World International
Children's Books of Note In this issue of Bookbird, we commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of IBBY in 1953 in Zurich, Switzerland, and prepare readers for the 50th Anniversary World Congress to be held in Basel, Switzerland, September 29 to October 3, 2002. The articles we have selected celebrate many facets of IBBY's worldwide work to bring children and their literature together. We are honored to have Tayo Shima, current president of IBBY, introduce the issue with highlights of IBBY's mission and history. The first articles following her preface provide a context about some of the people and events that gave rise to IBBY. The vision of Jella Lepman, one of IBBY's founders-to build international understanding through children's books-is the heart and soul of the organization. Thus, we have departed from the traditional order of articles in Bookbird by beginning with an Author Spotlight on Lepman. This feature describes Lepman's work from her early years as a writer and broadcast journalist through her instrumental roles in the creation of the International Youth Library in Munich, Germany, IBBY, the Hans Christian Andersen Award, and Bookbird itself. This remarkable woman's legacy touches virtually everything IBBY does today. The International Youth Library, which Lepman founded in 1949 before IBBY was created, is the focus of our second article contributed by Barbara Sharioth, the current director of the library. This collection, which embodies Lepman's dream to make literature from around the world available for children, has increased greatly in size and scope to become an international center that attracts scholars and continues to offer programs for young readers. Leena Maisson, Executive Director of IBBY, provides an intriguing personal and professional retrospective of her long association with the organization and many of its eminent leaders, such as Lepman. Further, Shirley Ernst interviewed Margaret McElderry, one of the first US publishers to bring translated children's books from abroad to the American audience and who became active in IBBY several decades ago. Other articles demonstrate IBBY's contemporary influence. Carmen Diana Dearden, past president of IBBY and editor, president, and publisher of Ediciones Ekaré and Banco del Libro in Venezuela, presents a Latin American perspective on children's book publishing and a special reading project, Leer para vivir (Read to Live). Jay Heale, Hans Christian Andersen Award jury president and IBBY South Africa secretary, assesses the status of children's books in Africa and plans for the 29th IBBY World Congress in Cape Town in 2004. Theresia Volotinen describes the strong bonds of cooperation that have developed among the Nordic National Sections of IBBY through annual meetings and other projects to promote children's literature in those countries. Finally, Leena Maissen interviews Geneviève Patte, active IBBY member for many years, about her role as former director of the French National Centre for Children's Books. The theme of IBBY's global commitment to and influence on promoting children's literature and reading continues in the regular features of this issue, which highlight children's book publishing in Poland, a distinctive library program initiated by Denmark in Chile, and reviews by Julinda Abu-Nasr, founder of Lebanon's IBBY National Section, of children's books from the Arab world. May the ideals of IBBY's founders flourish for another fifty years! The
Bookbird Editors: To
Bookbird Readers, The 50th Anniversary Congress of IBBY reflects the development of the organization since its founding in Zurich by Jella Lepman and others in 1953 and anticipates its activities unfolding in the twenty-first century. The congresses held in New Delhi in 1998, in Cartagena de Indias in 2000, and in Basel in 2002 (the four years during which I have served as President) have vividly reflected the steady spread of IBBY activities to embrace the entire world. In 1990, IBBY elected Canada's Ronald Jobe as its first President from outside Europe and, in 1994, Carmen Diana Dearden as its first President from Latin America. In 1998, I was chosen as the first President from an Asian country. IBBY began in 1953 with a small group of European National Sections. Today, IBBY is a world-girdling network of National Sections as well as individual members in over seventy countries or territories. IBBY naturally faces difficult challenges in the practical management of this far-flung network, challenges that grow in proportion to its spread. One of the most acute issues we face is how to build bridges between National Sections functioning in extremely diverse political and economic environments. We must not forget, however, that Jella Lepman's call, first issued fifty years ago, to sow the seeds of peace through children's books, was inspired by the horrors of World War II. In full recognition of what can be done by international politics, nations, and worldwide organizations, she expressed her hope and profound belief in the potential of children yet to grow into adulthood. Lepman's book A Bridge of Children's Books (Chicago: American Library Association, 1969), recounting her experiences in postwar Germany, describes a portrait of the limitations as well as the aspirations of human society that applies as much to our world today as it did to hers half a century ago. The keynote speaker at the 1951 conference, which brought together people concerned with children's books to discuss the possibility of establishing an organization that became IBBY, was the Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset. Ortega's words on that occasion are important: The twentieth century surpasses the nineteenth in proportion as it negates the peculiarities of the former century. Such a negation, however, presumes that the past century lives on in the present. Maturity is not a dissolving away from childhood, but a bringing together of childhood…The songs of poets, the words of the wise, the genius of politicians are no more than grown-up echoes of the voices that have been long held in check and that wish to flourish as the eternal child. The lives of children today are shaped by advanced multimedia and electronic technology and passing on the legacy of the twentieth century in the twenty-first. What is now being tested is whether we can transcend external differences and encourage children to appreciate, through books, the preciousness of human history and the time we human beings possess. What is the mission of IBBY in the twenty-first century? The condition of humanity has changed, and the living environments of children have been transformed. What perspective do we need to respond to these changes? I believe that we have come to a point when we must reaffirm our aspirations for the future of humanity-young people's potential to develop, to temper and refine their emotional reactions, and to attain a wise and mature understanding of their world-as Ortega y Gasset conveyed to those present when the seeds of IBBY were first sown. |
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