Bookbird 4 / 2017

Bookbird 55.4 (2017) Hans Christian Andersen Award Nominees 2018

This is a very special Bookbird. In it we highlight the 33 authors and 28 illustrators who were nominated for the 2018 Hans Christian Andersen Awards by their national sections. Each one of the nominees has enormous importance nationally and as nominees for the Andersen Awards, they are being honoured internationally. The Andersen Awards are supported by Nami Island Inc. (since 2009), and the publication of this issue has been made possible through a gift from Nami Island Inc. IBBY gratefully acknowledges their support of the Hans Christian Andersen Awards, and of the publication of this very, very special issue of Bookbird.

There is a second reason why this is a very special Bookbird. For with this issue we celebrate that our journal has attained the respectable age of 60 years. Previous editors of Bookbird have willingly contributed to this special issue with short accounts of what happened on their watch: highlights, obstacles, changes, joys, frustrations. We warmly thank them all for their wonderful contributions. These are Lucia Binder, Jeffrey Garrett, Meena Khorana, Siobhán Parkinson, Evelyn Freeman, Sylvia Vardell and Roxanne Harde. Current editor Björn Sundmark also contacted Christiane Raabe at the International Youth Library who contributed a fascinating article about the first pioneering years, when Jella Lepman launched Bookbird at the Library. In another text, Valerie Coghlan puts Lepman’s initiative into the context of her other labours in the field of children’s reading.