Literature in a Multi-Literate World

The 35th international IBBY congress in Auckland closed on Sunday after four days of speeches, panel discussions and meetings. (IBBY stands for The International Board on Books for Young People). The overall theme was, “Literature in a Multi-Literate World” and issues like: “How do we nurture local and indigenous literature at the same time as meeting the global interests and needs of young?” were discussed.

The unique cultural context of New Zealand impressed the 500 delegates from 60 countries and the whole event was a huge success. The conclusion was that  ideas, imagination and emotion captured in very different contexts can be expressed universally and understood by children and young adults thanks to experts and writers like Julia Eccleshare (UK), Katherine Paterson (US), Carole Bloch (South Africa), Nahoko Uehasho (Japan) and many, many others.

The IBBY honour list was presented, and among writers, illustrators and translators being given diplomas was Mudite Treimane from Latvia, honoured for her translation of a book about Emma Gloria by Finnish-Swedish Henrika Andersson. Cao Wenxuan (China) winner of the Hans Christian Andersen award 2016, received standing ovations for his acceptance speech.

Prior to the conference overseas visitors had the possibilities to visit public and school libraries. The directors for the congress, Dr Libby Limbrick and Rosemary Tisdall did a marvelous job together with their team! If you want to find out more about the congress, have a look at the IBBY 2016 website. Below you also find some pictures of people that Helen Sigeland, ALMA director, met during the conference!

Opening ceremony.

 

Nahoko Ueshari (writer) and Cathy Hirano (translator)

Julia Eccleshare, writer and journalist.

Two ALMA laureates meeting for the first time; Katherine Paterson (2006) and Carole Bloch, director of PRAESA (2015).

Mudite Treimane from Latvia was honoured for her translation of a book about Emma Gloria by Finnish-Swedish Henrika Andersson.

500 delegates from 60 countries came to Auckland.

 

 

Book recommendation: “What I was”

If you haven’t read Meg Rosoff’s “What I was” yet, you should take the chance and get to know the third novel of this year’s ALMA laureate.

“What I was” (2007), takes the form of a retrospective personal history where body, identity and gender issues, and themes of loss and memory, are central. It is a complex tale of friendship, love, and liberation, of reflections on a wounded past, and of difficult crossroads in life.

The story takes place in the 1960’s in a coastal landscape that is slowly sinking beneath the sea: a suggestive setting that mirrors the transgression of boundaries staged in the novel. In this barren world, we meet a sixteen-year-old narrator who has been sent off to a school for boys after being expelled from two previous boarding schools. His father demands that he clean up his act and become a man, but being a boy who measures up to the middle-class ideals of his family and school – popular, smart, athletic – is hard enough. Chafing at the future that has been laid out for him, he finds an escape when he meets Finn, a boy who lives alone in a shack by the ocean. In Finn he sees the person he would like to be, but his all-absorbing love has dramatic consequences and blinds him to who Finn really is.