Worlds of Words

7th Annual Regional IBBY Conference

WOW: ICCAL partner, the United States Board on Books for Young People (USBBY) will host the 7th annual regional conference of International Board of Books for Young People (IBBY), on November 2-4 at the Westward Look Resort in Tucson. “Children Between Worlds: Intercultural Relations in Books for Children and Young Adults,” presents a rare opportunity to interact with international authors and illustrators and to think about issues related to the use of literature to build intercultural understanding.

The conference, which begins Friday evening at 7:00 p.m. with an opening session by illustrator Yuyi Morales and followed by dessert and roundtable conversations with Arizona authors and illustrators, features speakers from Japan, England, the West Bank, Ghana, Mexico, and the U.S.

Yuyi Morales is an artist, author, puppet maker, Brazilian folk dancer, and a former host of a Spanish-language storytelling radio show. Born in Veracruz, Mexico, she wrote and illustrated Just a Minute: A Trickster Tale and Counting Book and illustrated Harvesting Hope: The Story of Cesar Chavez, both of which won numerous awards including the Pura Belpre.

Ibtisam S. Barakat, an award-winning Palestinian-American writer, poet, educator and founder of Write Your Life seminars, will talk about her recent book, Tasting the Sky, the story of her Palestinian childhood. She is a bilingual speaker who blends the poetry of Arabic and English.

Nancy Farmer is the highly acclaimed author of books such as The House of Scorpions, The Ear, The Eye and the Arm, and A Girl Named Disaster. She was raised in Arizona and traveled widely in Africa where she lived for many years.

Meshack Asare from West Africa will deliver the Dorothy Briley lecture. He is a Ghanan children’s author and illustrator whose work is regularly translated into different languages including German, Danish, Swedish, and Japanese and published in many countries. His book, Sosu’s Call, was published in the U.S. after winning the 1999 UNESCO Prize for Children’s and Young Adult Literature in the Service of Tolerance.

Another keynote will be given by Tayo Shima, Japanese children’s book editor, lecturer and consultant, who will talk about the ways in which picture books as art are able to traverse time and culture. She is from Tokyo and has spent her life promoting children’s literature internationally. She is a past President of IBBY and is co-director of Musee Imaginaire, a private reference library of historical picture books.

Marty Roessel, a Navajo photographer and author of Songs from the Loom and Kinaald¡, will chair a panel of American Indian authors and illustrators, including Shonto Begay and Roberta John. The ending presentation will be given by David Almond, who has received many awards in his home country of England, for novels such as Skellig, and Kit’s Wilderness. His most recent novel, Clay, is on the USBBY’s Outstanding International list.

Arizona authors and illustrators will be featured in special roundtable discussions on Friday night where they will display drafts of their illustrations and writing for recent books. Participants will have an opportunity to informally talk with these illustrators and authors, including Kendrick Bennally, Monica Brown, David Christiana, Gerald Dawanendewa, Chris Gall, Juanita Havill, Ronald Himler, Susan Lowell, Guy Porfirio, Joan Sandin, and Jennifer Ward, among others.

In addition to these presentations, participants will be able to view the 2006 IBBY Honour Book Exhibit and the Munich International Youth Library (IYL) Traveling Book Exhibit on Children between Worlds. The Honour exhibit contains the three books (illustration, writing, and translation) from each nominating country within IBBY. These books are representative of the best in children’s literature from the country. The exhibit provides insight into the diverse cultural, political and social settings in which children live and grow and provides the basis for developing exemplary international collections.

The Children between Worlds exhibit was put together by the International Youth Library in Munich, Germany. This exhibit of 60 books contains texts and images that address cultural divides and intercultural relations as a means of inviting dialogue across cultures. The selections range from almost textless picture books for toddlers to novels for young adults, from complex picture books for older children to books of photographs about the beauty of the world. These exhibits will remain in Tucson for several months and there will be several special events held in the International Collection of Children’s and Adolescent Literature at the University of Arizona during November and December around these exhibits.

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