Day 24: IBBY Germany

I had a fantastic visit to the IBBY Germany office after work tonight. The head of the organisation Doris Breitmoser welcomed me warmly, and introduced me to her workmates, and then we sat down with lovely green tea and a tasty German christmas treat while Doris talked to me about some of the work IBBY Germany does, including a recent 5 year programme of literanauts which are groups of young adult readers promoting reading, and facilitating the awarding of German literature awards. Doris showed me the winning books for 2017, including the winning picturebook ‘Nobody comes through here!'  - very postmodern, and the winning non-fiction picturebook called 'Bees'.  

One interesting thing about these awards is that they are open to books written in German, but the author/illustrator can be from anywhere in the world. Doris explained this followed on from the vision of Jella Lepman (who I’ve written about before- she founded the library I am working at) who believed in German children learning about the rest of the world through children’s literature. That is an interesting quality (and relatively unusual in the world of awards, I believe) which made me think.

After my visit to the office we went to the opening of the Munich Literature Festival. Once the opening which gave a taster of several of the featured authors (including a famous German writer and illustrator Paul Maar) was complete, we got to look at the children’s literature stands of many beautiful books.