Retrospective of the Celebrations of the International Children’s Book Day 2022

International Children’s Book Day is celebrated every year on or around the birthday of Hans Christian Andersen, 2 April, to inspire a love of reading and to call attention to children’s books. ICBD 2022 was sponsored by IBBY Canada. The message, “Stories are wings that help you soar everydaywas written by Richard Van Camp and the poster was created by Julie Flett.

We have once again prepared a tour of the inspiring activities that were organized in 2022 to celebrate the International Children's Book Day!

In-person celebrations

A few IBBY Sections organized one-week long festivals around 2 April to celebrate the joy of reading in multiple forms. IBBY Japan held a one-week programme in March for adults and children, including lectures and science activities. IBBY Armenia organized a week-long festival with a very inspiring programme, including an exhibition, games, performances, poetry reading, tree planting, meetings with writers and other great activities. See their full programme here.

Other sections, such as IBBY Nepal or IBBY Palestine, organized reading promotion activities in schools and in libraries.

IBBY Canada, the sponsor of ICBD 2022, organized classroom readings and provided an activity kit to be used everywhere around the world in the classrooms, in English and in French.

Online events

Several IBBY Sections organized online events, using Zoom or live-streaming platforms, thus allowing a much wider audience to join their celebrations. IBBY Canada, the sponsor of ICBD, had a full programme of online events and interviews with different people working in the field of children’s books.

IBBY Australia organized an online event featuring different Andersen Award nominees from Australia, including Robert Ingpen, who won the Illustrator Award in 1986. IBBY Indonesia organized a webinar on the topic “From Story to Animation” with different speakers including reading promoter and chair of INABBY Murti Bunanta. More information

Other celebrations of ICBD

IBBY Estonia organized a drawing competition for children ages 7 to 12, related to the ICBD message: "Stories are wings". The best 10 will participate in a planned workshop with Estonian illustrator Viive Noor.

Every year to celebrate ICBD, IBBY Iceland organizes a radio broadcast of an unpublished short story by an Icelandic author, which is listened to in schools at the same time. This year’s story was "There is a monster in my soup" by Guðna Líndal Benediktsson

Other sections combined their own events with the celebration of ICBD. IBBY Lithuania celebrated their 30th anniversary on 2 April (watch the ceremony here).

IBBY Slovenia organized a solidarity recital for Ukraine, with lectures by librarians for children and young adults from Ukraine.

IBBY Greece organized their own ceremony to celebrate ICBD, where they announced the winners of their awards (see the full list here) and presented their diplomas to all their nominees.

Several IBBY sections translated the ICBD message in their own language:

International Children's Book Day is celebrated not only by IBBY sections, but also by libraries, bookstores, publishing houses and other institutions around the world. This year’s message and poster were shared widely through social media contributing to International Children’s Book Day and IBBY's work becoming more widely known.

More information with #ICBD2022.
 

International Children’s Book Day, 2 April 2022,

Many thanks go to IBBY Canada and the two creators: Richard Van Camp for his inspiring text and Julie Flett for her delightful artwork.

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