Bookbird 4 / 2023
Bookbird: A Journal of International Children’s Literature, Vol. 61, No. 4, 2023
Bookbird Special Issue Featuring the Nominees for the 2024 Hans Christian Andersen Award, and Including a Special Section Celebrating 70 Years of IBBY.
The latest issue of Bookbird has been released. And what an issue it is! This is the biennial Hans Christian Andersen special presenting all fifty-nine nominees–writers and illustrators–for the 2024 Hans Christian Andersen Awards. A full page article features each nominee, complete with a photo and a list of five significant titles by the nominee. The authors and illustrators are selected by their IBBY National Sections, and countries represented include Argentina, Australia, Brazil, China, Iran, Italy and Japan. Previous winners have come from these countries, and may do so again, but 2024 may reveal winning talent from elsewhere. Whatever the result, the Bookbird Andersen Award issue showcases some of the most gifted creators of children’s and young adult books from around the globe.
After the announcement of the winners and shortlist, another special Bookbird issue features articles by experts in children’s literature discussing why the work of these individuals has been selected. These two Andersen issues are collectors’ items, which, between them provide over the years an invaluable who’s who in international children’s literature.
The seventy years since the founding of IBBY by Jella Lepman is marked by four IBBY activists who offer short articles on the importance of IBBY–and of Bookbird–in their professional lives and to the children’s books community at large. These articles combined with the Andersen nominees features plus two short articles about the work of the International Youth Library in Munich, also founded by Lepman, make the final Bookbird of 2023 an issue to be treasured.
