January 25, 2010

Jeans-Visit from Australia!
What an unusual event!

Under the motto “Pimp Your Jeans”, jeans were decorated with beads, feathers and lots of colour at the International Youth Library in summer 2009. Afterwards, the prettiest jeans were sent on a long journey to Gosford, New South Wales, Australia. And it paid off: in return, last week the International Youth Library received a pair of beautifully decorated jeans from Australia!

The idea is based on the book series “The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants” by Ann Brashares: four girls are inseparable but have to spend the summer apart from each other. Fortunately, they own a very special pair of jeans! Over the summer, they send the jeans back und forth thus feeling connected to each other.

For the past two years, libraries in New South Wales have used this story as an inspiration for a very special activity: young fans of the books decorate jeans and, after a short stay at their local library, send them on to the next town. The beautiful results can be admired on the project’s webpage http://jeangeanies.pbworks.com/ where there are also pictures of the “Pimp Your Jeans” event at the International Youth Library.

So now you can not only lend the “Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants” books at the International Youth library, you can also admire a true and original pair of Australian jeans – decorated with exotic animals and a typically Australian platypus. (uz)
 

13 October 2009
White Ravens Festival
for international children's and youth literature
20 to 25 July 2010
Under the patronage of Wolfgang Heubisch, PhD, Bavarian Minister of Sciences, Research and the Arts, the International Youth Library will be organising the first White Ravens Festival for International Children’s and Youth Literature in summer 2010. For five days, authors and illustrators from Bavaria and abroad will read from their books, conduct workshops and creative writing classes, and talk about themselves and their work in podium discussions. The festival will provide space both for renowned, award-winning authors and illustrators and for new literary discoveries and will focus on the encounter between these authors and illustrators and their young and adult audience. The festival’s Bavarian and international contributions will serve as a bridge between different cultures. (cg) ...more

14 September 2009

New course for children! “From poet to printer”

Writing poetry is fun. And it’s even better when you can print your own work right away! From 24 September, children will be able experiment with different types of poetry and printing techniques in the “From poet to printer” course with the graphic artist Jule Pfeiffer-Spiekermann.. (uz)

Click here for dates...

5 August 2009

Eric Carle birthday party

The Very Hungry Caterpillar was 40 this year, and his creator Eric Carle turned 80! The International Youth Library and over 600 caterpillar fans celebrated these special birthdays with an exciting summer party. In perfect weather the children scampered round the castle courtyard with home-made butterflies, tried out their skills on the caterpillar course or had themselves transformed into one of Eric Carle’s picture-book characters in the make-up corner. In front of the main building the Very Hungry Caterpillar musical was played on the barrel organ and numerous stories were read aloud in the library. International guests were read the story of probably the most famous gourmand the world in English, Japanese, Italian and Norwegian. Eric Carle’s sister, Christa Bareis, read from her brother’s books. She came here specially for the afternoon from Stuttgart and, like all the other guests, thoroughly enjoyed the birthday party, which ended with a spirited caterpillar polonaise. (vs)

International Youth Library, Munich: catalogue of Geneva children’s and youth book collection is online
 

In August 2009, the retroconversion of the so-called Geneva Catalogue was completed. This means that the “Geneva Collection” can be accessed via the International Youth Library’s OPAC and via the Bavarian Library Network. Thus, a valuable and large international historical children’s and youth book collection can now be found online.

The Geneva Collection was established between 1928 and 1969 by the Bureau d’Éducation in Geneva. The Bureau d’Éducation assigned committees, at first in countries that were members of the League of Nations, but later also in other countries, to send their best children’s and youth books. In 1969, the collection was donated to the International Youth Library, which already was an “associated project of UNESCO”. The collection contains not only new releases published around the world between 1928 and 1969 but also older books which were published from 1897 onwards; in total, it contains almost 30,000 books from 58 countries. Several of the collection’s titles are the only copies available worldwide because in some of the League of Nation’s member countries, children’s and youth books were not collected systematically.

In an offline retroconversion project, which was done in cooperation with the Bavarian Library Network, the Geneva Catalogue’s charts were scanned, automatically converted into MAB2-categories via optical character recognition, reworked intellectually and imported into the Bavarian Library Network’s database and into the International Youth Library’s SISIS-database. With the help of a programme, the copy data were generated from the local title data.

The conversion of the Geneva Collection has made a unique source accessible for research into international children’s and youth literature. (jr)

25 June 2009

60th anniversary of the International Youth Library

When the International Youth Library opened its doors in 1949 in a villa in the Max-Vorstadt district of Munich to children, young people, librarians, authors, publishers and book-lovers from all over the world, an educational experiment was launched which is still instrumental in furthering the creative promotion of international literature for children and young people and encouraging intercultural dialogue through children’s books. The International Youth Library, founded as a work of reconciliation by the German-Jewish emigrant Jella Lepman, was furnished at the time with 8,000 books. In the meantime, with 580,000 books in 130 languages, it has become the most important library for children’s and young people’s literature in the world and is located in Blutenburg Castle on the western edge of Munich. The 60th birthday of this unique institution was marked with a ceremony on 25 June, which was followed over the next few days by an anniversary program.

The ceremony was attended by 250 invited guests from Germany and abroad, including political and cultural representatives, authors, illustrators, publishers, librarians and children’s book experts from China, Japan, India, Korea, the USA, Colombia, the UK, France, the Netherlands, Austria and Switzerland.
From left to right: Rolf Griebel, Binette Schroeder,
Peter Nickl, Nikolaus Gradl, Christiane Raabe,
Gerd Hoofe, Sabine Solf, Marcel Huber

Dr. Sabine Solf, Chairman of the Board of the International Youth Library’s Foundation, opened the event, recalling the social and political upheaval and spirit of optimism of the postwar period when Jella Lepman founded the library.

This was followed by an address by Gerd Hoofe, Secretary of State in the Federal Ministry of Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth, who said that greater emphasis should be placed on cultural and intercultural education and underlined the important, pioneering role of  the International Youth Library in this area. He particularly praised the school class program and the International Youth Library’s commitment to intercultural education, which is becoming increasingly important in our globalised world where people link up in so many different ways, and has become essential for social interaction. The International Library, he resumed, is a place with an international outlook where children and young people learn about life in other parts of the world.

Dr. Marcel Huber, Secretary of State in the Bavarian Ministry of Education and the Arts, also acknowledged the educational work of the International Youth Library. He praised the library’s model projects for the promotion of reading, such as the “Gegengelesen” (Reading critically) project for children at Hauptschulen (general secondary schools) and the writing workshops entitled “What has that got to do with me” for adolescents and young adults in partnership with the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site.

Councillor Nikolaus Gradl, speaking on behalf of the Mayor of Munich, went back again to the beginnings of the library and underlined the contribution made by Jella Lepman to the achievement of peace and tolerance and the establishment of a democratic German society.

The author Felicitas Hoppe gave an intellectually stimulating and entertaining speech entitled “In the secret garden. The importance of reading children’s books”. She shared with her audience the secrets of her own reading experiences, which revealed to her that there is no difference between children’s and adult literature. The only distinction is between good and bad books.

From left to right: Jörg Baesecke, Gerd Hoofe, Nikolaus Gradl, Sabine Solf, Marcel Huber, Felicitas Hoppe, Lionel Veer, Christiane Raabe, Ursula Schleibner, Kinder der Grandlschule

At the close of the ceremony, the Director of the International Youth Library, Dr. Christiane Raabe, thanked all the sponsors and friends of the library for their many years of support, and expressed the hope that this would continue even in these difficult economic times. At a time where people were above all feeling the negative effects of globalisation, it was particularly important to enable children, through discussion with foreign authors and illustrators, to experience internationality as an enrichment and not as a threat.

Lyrical interludes were provided by children from the Grundschule an der Grandlstrasse, who presented classical ballads together with the actor Jörg Baesecke. They had illustrated the scenes with painstakingly constructed paper theatres, which they presented during the recitation of the poems to a delighted public.


The opening of the anniversary events with its mixture of ceremony and entertainment and the favourable speeches of the political representatives were a particularly gratifying experience for the International Library. It is to be hoped that the positive signal generated by this event will continue to resonate for a long time. (cr)

International Author's and Illustrator's Forum “Twas bright as day, the night lay dark on the blue frosted ocean. Children's poetry and illustration” and opening of the exhibition, “Gedichte, Poems, Básně, Shī”.

As part of the International Youth Library’s anniversary celebrations, on the afternoon of 25 June and on 26 June, an international author and illustrator forum was held on the subject of children’s poems and their illustration. Children’s poems and illustration go hand in hand. Optimally they should form a single context. During the one-and-a-half days, workshop discussions with poets and illustrators were held to explore on a practical rather than an academic basis the question of why in children’s literature language pictures are translated into actual pictures and what the illustration contributes in relation to the text. Authors and illustrators from Germany and abroad were invited to contribute. The Westphalian author and illustrator Jutta Richter opened the forum with a passionate plea for the reading of poetry. In her fascinating lecture she described the influence ballads and poems had had on her as a child and how this early encounter sowed the seeds of a life-long love of poetry which no mistreatment of literary material at school could spoil. She was followed by the British children’s poet Andrew Fusek Peters, whose funny and serious poems for young people have a strong autobiographical element. In an entertaining, fast-paced presentation he recited his own poems, talked about his life and his family and closed with an artistic and literary feat by juggling simultaneously with words and balls. In the evening, the exhibition “Gedichte, Poems, Básně, Shī” was opened with a poetry reading. The actor Friedhelm Ptok read children’s poems spanning a period that began with the Enlightenment and continued to the present day, and in keeping with the subject of the forum and the exhibition, an illustration was shown for every poem. The second day began with a discussion moderated by Dr. Roswitha Budeus-Budde between the publisher Ulrich Störiko-Blume and the translator, author and editor Dr. Uwe-Michael Gutzschhahn on the market value of children’s poems. All three were in agreement that volumes of poetry were hard to sell on the present children’s literature market and that it requires courage and commitment to publish children’s poetry. Nevertheless, this is a niche that must not be neglected. Next came a magnificent presentation by the Dutch author and artist Ted van Lieshout, who, in a dialogue skilfully steered by the Hamburg translator Rolf Erdorf, gave the audience a fascinating insight into his wide range of unconventional poetry. The creativity and dry humour of the artist, who has won many awards, were very much to the fore. He recognises no taboos, and with his bold, irreverent approach to art and an anarchic mixture of styles produces post-modern picture worlds of a kind that do not exist on the German children’s book market. The Austrian artist duo Gerda Anger-Schmidt and Renate Habinger then talked to the Viennese journalist Franz Lettner. Working as a team, they have produced the unconventional and entertaining poetry books “Neun nackte Nilpferddamen” and “Muss man Miezen siezen”. They talked about the complementary nature of their work, and described how they bounced ideas off one another and what boundaries they each had to respect. The French poet, painter and rock musician Lionel Le Néouanic spoke very modestly and charmingly about his work and the powerful collages he created for the poetry book “Gentil-Méchant”. Last to take the stage were two German illustrators: Verena Ballhaus and Klaus Ensikat. They talked to the Hamburg critic Renate Raecke about the pleasures and problems of rendering classical poems and ballads in pictures. With this the forum came to an end. What it showed overall was that children’s poetry is an important genre that will hopefully continue to receive the place on publishers’ programmes and the popularity that it deserves. (cr)

Andrew Fusek Peters Friedhelm Ptok Ulrich Störiko-Blume, Ros-witha Budeus-Budde, Uwe Gutzschhahn Ted van Lieshout, Rolf Erdorf Renate Habinger Lionel Le Néouanic Klaus Ensikat, Renate Raecke, Verena Ballhaus

Family poetry festival on the occasion of the 60th anniversary

Since the events to mark the 60th anniversary of the International Youth Library on 25 and 26 June primarily appealed to an adult public, the final event on Sunday 28 June was for children and families, who were invited to a take part in a poetry festival. In spite of the showers and the extreme humidity, several hundred guests responded to the invitation.

Various workshops were organised for the children on different aspects of poetry. How can I recite a poem so that its meaning is really clear? The workshop “Poetry and movement” showed how words can be given added power and emphasis with mime and gestures. As a result, many different figures from poems were brought to life with full use of the body.

And if games with the voice and body were less appealing, the children could approach poetry through painting and drawing. How to present a poem in an attractive form was the theme of the “Word sport” workshop, which was the right place for children who wanted to put their rhymes into pictures. And in the calligraphy workshop lots of unusual typographical solutions were encouraged.

And what can I do if I can’t read or write yet? There was even something for the very young: in the Rhyme Memory workshop they had to find pairs of cards with rhyming words – and with the words shown as pictures even the smallest children could do this easily! And anyone who had finally run out of creative ideas could seek inspiration in the exhibition “Gedichte, Poems, Básně, Shī – children’s poems and illustration”.

The anniversary closed with another very special birthday present for the library: birthday cards made by the children to spread the news of the 60th anniversary were attached to 200 balloons and released into the evening sky to the sound of “Happy Birthday” sung in several different languages. (cr)

28 May 2009

Winner of the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award 2009 at the International Youth Library

The Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award (ALMA) is the world’s largest monetary award for children’s and young people’s literature. Instigated by the Swedish government in 2002, it is presented annually to an important international author, illustrator or organisation active in the promotion of reading. This year the award went to the Tamer Institute for Community Education in Palestine. This independent organisation has been promoting the education and reading skills of children and young people in the Gaza Strip and West Jordan since 1989. The employees regularly visit villages, towns and refugee camps, read books with children and young people and organise plays, film and radio projects, discussion groups and circles. In addition, the Tamer Institute produces children’s books which are distributed to schools and libraries and organises a network of children’s libraries using the Ramallah public library as its resource centre.

The Director of the International Youth Library, Dr. Christiane Raabe, warmly welcomed the guests: the General Director of the Tamer Institute, Renad Quabbaj, Erik Titusson, ALMA Director, and representatives of the city of Munich and the Swedish Embassy. In her speech Ruth Jacoby, the Swedish Ambassador to Germany, said how impressed she was by the commitment of the Tamer Institute, whose employees were doing magnificent work under the most difficult conditions. Dr. Thomas Steinfeld, head of the Süddeutsche Zeitung’s Feuilleton, honoured the work of Astrid Lindgren in his speech “The mystery of spunk”. In an inspiring, highly detailed presentation, he explored in particular the depth and melancholy which are as much a character of Astrid Lindgren’s books as the humour. This, said Steinfeld, is precisely what makes her so unique – in every one of her stories she strikes exactly the right note between fun and seriousness that makes children feel they are being taken seriously, and is the mark of great literature.

The final speaker was Renad Quabbaj, who presented the work of the Tamer Institute and showed her listeners how important it was to provide an element of culture and normality for children and young people in war regions through education and literature. As an example of its work, she showed one of the picture books created by the Tamer Institute: “al-hirāf lā Ta’kal al-qitat” (Sheep don’t eat cats) by Khaled Juma. Using the metaphor of a sheep family that moves into a neighbourhood of cats and is at first regarded with suspicion, the story shows how it is possible for people to get along with one another. The translation specially commissioned for this event was read by Dr. Andreas Bode. (uz)

Forthcoming event: Winner of this year’s Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award at the International Youth Library on 28 May
 

The Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award has been presented by the Swedish government since 2003. Every year authors, illustrators and projects which promote reading are nominated. Worth five million Swedish crowns, it is the world’s largest monetary award for children’s and young people’s literature.

This year’s award winner is the Tamer Institute for Community Communication in Ramallah. This independent organisation has been promoting the education and reading skills of children and young people in the Gaza Strip and West Jordan since 1989. Employees of the Tamer Institute visit towns, villages and refugee camps, organising many different projects: reading books with the children, encouraging them to make up stories and put them into book form, staging plays, developing film and radio projects and holding discussions and talks. The Tamer Institute also organises a network of children’s libraries and trains librarians using the resources of the Ramallah public library. On 2 June, the award will be presented to the Tamer Institute by Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden at a ceremony in Stockholm.

And before this, on Thursday 28 May at 6pm, the prize-winners will be presenting their work at the International Youth Library. The event has been organised in cooperation with the Swedish Embassy in Berlin. (uz)

Testing the White Ravens

“From which Dutch club did Rafael van der Vaart transfer to the Bundesliga?” – This was only one of the many exciting quiz questions with which Edward van de Vendel began his reading on 12 March in the International Youth Library. Around 80 year four pupils enjoyed testing their knowledge about the Netherlands in this entertaining way. The well-known children’s book author visited the library as part of the Munich Junior Book Fair. He regaled his public with exciting, amusing and interesting facts about his home country – and read from one of his splendid books. “Twice oder Cooler als Eis” tells the story of  the twins Cal and Gus, who in addition to their careers as schoolboys are also enthusiastic rappers. In this way the two can cope better with not only with the unpleasant conflicts with teachers but also with the turmoil of their first big love affair. The children in the audience could obviously relate to this and listened intently to the lively reading of this humorous story.

Presentation of the Erich Kästner Award at the International Youth Library
On Saturday 7 March 2009, the International Youth Library opened its doors for a special ceremony: on the occasion of its annual conference, the Erich Kästner Gesellschaft, which is headquartered at Blutenburg Castle, presented the Erich Kästner Award for literature to the author of books for children and young people Andreas Steinhöfel.
More than two hundred invited guests came to the award ceremony in the evening, including two representatives of the Munich City Council and numerous well-known representatives of children’s literature.

In her sensitive laudation, Hilde Elisabeth Menzel described Andreas Steinhöfel as a worthy successor to his great model Erich Kästner. The jury particularly praised Steinhöfel’s cautious, highly respectful approach to his readers. Like no other author of books for young people, Steinhöfel knew how to describe socially problematic life situations with humour and an appropriate choice of language, without striking a note of arrogance or unnecessarily instructing his readers.

A further award was presented to the actor Walter Sittler and the SAGAS-Ensemble Stuttgart for their production “Als ich ein kleiner Junge war” (When I was a small boy). The jury praised the impressive scenes and music that created a bridge between Kästner’s childhood and youth and life in our times. (uz)

World premiere!
When Andreas Steinhöfel came to the International Youth Library for the presentation of the Erich Kästner Award for Literature on 7 March, he made sure his young fans were not left out of the proceedings. In the afternoon, the prize-winning author presented his latest book “Rico, Oskar und das Herzgebreche”, which will only be going on sale in April. The approximately one hundred keen listeners established from the entertaining reading that this new volume about the unusual duo Rico and Oskar is going to be every bit as witty and exciting as the first volume  “Rico, Oskar und die Tieferschatten”. (uz)

Poetry workshop

“Write a poem about something that is important to you”: this was the exciting task that the German-Turkish poet Zehra Cirak set a class from the Ludwig-Auerbacher-Volksschule in Türkheim. In 2001, Ms Cirak received the Adelbert-von-Chamisso prize for literature. The Robert Bosch Foundation, which awards this prize annually, now organised a poetry workshop for school-children which was run by Zehra Cirak in the International Youth Library.

The pupils in their ninth year of school were first introduced to the work of Zehra Cirak. On the basis of her own poems, she showed the children the many possibilities of poetry and demonstrated that not every poem has to rhyme.

After this inspiring introduction, the pupils then went into action: first they all wrote down a word which was currently preoccupying them. Based on these words, they were divided into small theme groups, where a further word was added to every term. Every pupil then went on to write a poem.

The class was highly motivated, so that many successful, amusing and moving poems were created in the course of the workshop on a very wide variety of subjects – from love and friendship, beach walks and longing for the weekend to the joys of riding a moped.

The pupils painstakingly illustrated their works with pictures, and all took home an attractive memento of a successful workshop. (uz)

The winners from the city of Munich round of the 50^th Reading Aloud Competition organised by the German book trade have been chosen!

On 18 February, the Munich round of the Reading Aloud Competition took place in the International Youth Library. Madita Naumann from the Volksschule an der Sambergerstraße was the winner in the Hauptschule group. She read from the book “4x Herz und Caffè Latte” by Maiken Nielsen. In the Gymnasium (academically oriented secondary school) group, the first prize was awarded to Aylin Bahcekapili from the Lion-Feuchtwanger-Gymnasium, who read from Ulrike Bliefert’s novel “(K)ein Junge wie Paul(a)”. The other 15 participants however also skilfully entertained the public and the jury with their chosen books. The pupils in their sixth year of school read from a great mixture of popular classics, new publications and fantasy adventures and infected one another with their enthusiasm for books. Reading tips were exchanged and interest in new stories awakened.

Everyone enjoyed the surprise text that the schoolchildren had to read without preparation, which was taken from Andreas Steinhöfel’s “Rico, Oskar und der Tieferschatten”. All the participants were delighted with their certificates and their book present “Tote Maus für Papas Leben” by Marjolijn Hof. As the winners, Madita and Aylin received a book token worth 10 euros, a bouquet, and of course an invitation to take part in the next round covering the southern part of Upper Bavaria (uz).

Musician Joszko Broda and illustrator Józef Wilkon

29 January 2009

Opening of the exhibition “And the animals came in two by two”

Even the inhospitable January temperatures could not keep the over 150 guests away from the opening of the exhibition “And the animals came in two by two. Józef Wilkón and current children’s book illustration in Poland” on 29 January in the Jella Lepman Hall of the International Youth Library. The artists and connoisseurs from Poland and Germany were present at a world premiere, as the exhibits have never been shown before in this constellation. Józef Wilkon, one of the world’s best known children’s book illustrators, not only provided a selection of his pictures, sketches and objects, but also assumed a form of sponsorship for 10 young Polish illustrators. The works by these artists that are shown in the exhibition represent a cross-section of the many different styles current in Polish picture books. Present at the exhibition along with Józef Wilkon were Grażka Lange and Marta Ignerska, two of the illustrators whose works are shown. The Director of the International Youth Library, Dr. Christiane Raabe, welcomed the artists and the guests of honour from the Polish General Consulate in Munich to Blutenburg Castle. Consul General Elżbieta Sobótka and Grażyna Strelecka, Cultural Consul, had made the work with the International Youth Library a central project and thus helped to make the exhibition possible. The enthusiasm of all involved for this ambitious project was evident in the opening addresses and welcome speeches. The German wine and the Polish music which came at the end of this international evening were also very well received. (vs)