Last week the 40th IBBY (International Board on Books for Young People) Congress was hosted by IBBY Canada in Ottawa, Canada, with 500+ attendees from 60 countries in attendance.
The theme was “Listening to Each Other’s Voices” — and it was echoed across all the sessions, with a special focus on Indigenous and endangered languages as well as 2SLGBTQI+ books and disability/accessibility issues.
Canadian Senator Kristopher Wells unveiled the culmination of a major personal project with the exhibition and publication of the IBBY booklist — Reading With Pride: Stories for Everyone: Celebrating 2SLGBTQI+ Picture Books — PDF here — a collection of over 250+ titles (to start with).
The 2025 IBBY Collection for Young People with Disabilities booklist — PDF here — was also a featured exhibition at the Congress.
Check out the IBBY International Instagram for an overview of how amazing this whole event was: https://www.instagram.com/ibby.international/
Annette Goldsmith and I were there — and gave a 15-minute presentation about GLLI and its work as part of a panel on “Awards: Inclusivity & Diversity” on Saturday, August 8th.
We promised to post our slides and transcript today. So here is a link to a Google Doc — and the same file as a PDF.
In our presentation, we appealed for volunteers to help us with the three major GLLI projects — this blog, the Translated YA Book Prize, and “Building a Global Youth Literature Collection 101” — http://globalyouthlit.org.
This is is the Google volunteer Form where you can indicate how you might like to contribute.
Katie Day is an international school teacher-librarian in Singapore and has been an American expatriate for almost 40 years. She is currently on the GLLI Board and has served as the chair of the GLLI Translated YA Book Prize and co-chair of the Neev Book Award in India — as well as being heavily involved in international school librarian initiatives such as the Red Dot Book Awards in Singapore and the Siam Book Awards in Thailand.
Disclaimer: The opinions and views expressed are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect those of GLLI.
Global Literature in Libraries Initiative 