IBBY Honour List

The IBBY Honour List is a biennial selection of outstanding, recently published books, honouring writers, illustrators and translators from IBBY member countries. The IBBY Honour List is one of the most widespread and effective ways of furthering IBBY's objective of encouraging international understanding through children's literature.

The titles are selected by the National Sections which can nominate one book for each of the three categories. For a country with a substantial and continuing production of children's books in more than one language, one book may be submitted for writing and translation in each official language.

Important considerations in selecting the Honour List titles are that the books are representative of the best in children's literature from the country and that the books are suitable for publication throughout the world. The selection provides insight into the diverse cultural, political and social settings in which children live and grow and it can be used by all those involved with developing educational and literacy programmes and publishing initiatives to develop exemplary “international” collections.

The Honour List diplomas are presented at the IBBY Congresses where the catalogue is introduced and the books are shown for the first time. Thereafter seven parallel sets of the books circulate around the world at exhibitions during conferences and book fairs. Permanent collections of the IBBY Honour List books are kept in Munich, Zurich, Bratislava, St. Petersberg, Tokyo, Kuala Lumpur, Tucson and, until 2014, in Evanston.

Past Honour Lists can be found in the Archives. Publications can be ordered here.
 

IBBY Honour List 2024

The 2024 Honour List includes 184 nominations in 52 different languages from 59 countries. Selected for the 2024 list are 68 entries in the category of Writing; 55 in the category Illustration; and 61 in the category Translation. 

➜ Discover the selected titles

➜ Download the 2024 Honour List catalogue (PDF format: 11.4 MB)

➜ Purchase a copy of your catalogue here

➜ Watch the Honour List video with music

 

IBBY Honour List - Exhibitions and Collections

IBBY Honour List catalogue covers 2002–2022

Since 1994, the Honour List catalogue covers are exciting visual compositions made of motifs taken from books nominated in the IBBY Honour List of that year. 

Click on the cover if you wish to open the archive page dedicated to the corresponding IBBY Honour List.