Bookbird 4 / 2025
Bookbird: A Journal of International Children’s Literature, Vol. 63, No. 4, 2025
This is the Hans Christian Award Nominees issue for the 2026 awards.
Each of the nominees from forty-four IBBY national sections receives a full-page article outlining their careers in illustrating or writing. Illustrated by a photograph of each nominee, it includes a list of five of the nominee’s most notable titles. These biennial Bookbird issues comprise a unique insight into children’s books from around the world.
In addition, issue 63.4 carries an interview with Katherine Paterson by Siobhán Parkinson. The interview focuses on Katherine Paterson’s new book about the life of Jella Lepman. Lepman was the founder of IBBY, the International Youth Library, the Hans Christian Andersen Awards and much else to do with children’s literature. Lavishly illustrated by artist Sally Deng, it charts Lepman’s flight from Germany prior to the formation of Hitler’s government, her return to Germany following the war to engage in work with women and children and her realization that bringing books and children together was one sure way of helping young people to recover from the trauma the had endured during the war years.
The issue also contains further information about children’s books in the regular ‘Books on Books’ reviews and the short postcards which succinctly bring books for young readers from across the globe to the attention of Bookbird’s readers.
This issue is rounded off by two short articles about projects with which the International Youth Library was involved. The first, described “White-Blue-Yellow Children’s Book Bridge”, a project emanating from Bavaria in Germany which, via 30 public libraries, brought books in Ukrainian to children from Ukraine who had recently settled in Germany.
The second project described the Colibri Project “Colibri–Corpus Libri et Liberi: Digitisation of 19th-Century Children’s and Young Adult Literature”. The project which was funded by The German Research Foundation established a digital collection of German-language children’s and young adult literature. The project which took thirty-six months to complete now offers access to the digitized texts to researchers via participating libraries and an online portal (www.colibri-portal.eu).
Keep informed about international children’s literature with Bookbird.
Subscribe to Bookbird
Download articles on Project Muse
| |
Presenting the 2026 Hans Christian Andersen Award Nominees | by Chrysogonus Siddha Malilang | ii |
| |
Jella Lepman and Her Library of Dreams | by Siobhán Parkinson | 81 |
|
|
"White-Blue-Yellow Children’s Book Bridge” | by Katja Wiebe | 86 |
“Colibri—Corpus Libri et Liberi" | by Katja Wiebe and Jutta Reusch | 89 |
The 2026 Hans Christian Andersen Award Jury | | 93 |
|
|
