Time to Relax: Sarah and Nikki

The IBBY press conference on Monday afternoon was particularly newsworthy. The announcement of IBBY Documentation Centre for Linguistic Minorities,  Santiago de Compostela   supported by the Galician government is an excellent initiative and we look forward to hearing more about its development at the IBBY 2010 World Congress which will be held in the historic town.

An announcement was also made about the recipients of the IBBY-Asahi Reading Promotion Award. This award is presented to projects which are judged to be making a lasting contribution to reading promotion for children and young people. From the eleven nominations, two projects were selected. Editions Bakame, Books for Children in Rwandaand Action with Lao Children in Japan/Laos.

The packed  press conference room eagerly awaited news of the 2008 Hans Andersen Medal  recipients. When Roberto Innocenti  was announced as the winner of the award for illustration, the room errupted with cheers and applause. Innocenti is well known to British teachers particularly for his illustration of  Rose Blanche a powerful story of courage and resistance. The winning writer, Jürg Schubiger, is less familiar to British audiences and sadly there are no English translations of his books currently in print but German editions can be purchased online. David Almond was a finalist.

Bakame Editions Following the Rwandan genocide of 1994, Agnes Gyr-Ukunda established Editions Bakame in 1995 as an independent, non-profit publishing house for children and young people. Its aim is to give children books in Kinyarwanda, the national language understood by all Rwandans, in order to help them overcome the horrors of the genocide by means of healthy reading based on their culture. It is the first Rwandan publisher to offer children’s and youth literature in Kinyarwanda. Bakame publishes stories, documentaries, novels for young adults, as well as picture books. At the same time it works towards the revival of traditional oral literature and putting it in written form; the promotion of a reading culture in Rwanda; training of authors and illustrators in workshops and giving them the opportunity to be published. Since 1995, Bakame has published 30 titles with total print run exceeding 450,000 copies!

Action with Lao Children The Lao civil war and revolution in the late 1970’s forced a large number of refugees to flee the Indochinese Peninsula. Ms Chanthasone Inthavong, from Lao, but then living in Japan, believed that by just accepting the refugees did not solve the basic problems. Thus, in 1982 she established the Association for Sending Picture Books to Lao Children. At first the organization sent Japanese children's books, picture books and stationary to Lao children. Later in 1990 the association started sending goods to support the publishing of Lao books by Lao authors and artists. The activities that had started in Japan spread further in Lao. Now, 25 years later the Association has become a Non Government Organization with the title Action with Lao Children, which promotes literate education and urge rights of children in Lao. Since then, around 620,000 copies of books for children have been published in the Lao language. The project has united the National Library of Lao and the Ministry of Education, which supports the National Reading Promotion Project: one of their national priorities. To accomplish the goals and objectives of the project many reading activities have been developed.