IBBY 40th World Congress Ottawa, Canada 2026

IBBY Canada organised a fabulous four-day World Congress in August 2026 with keynotes, roundtables, panel sessions, workshops and poster sessions - this was my fourth IBBY Congress. I also attended two USBBY Conferences in the past. I always leave these events filled with admiration and awe of all the amazing work done by people from every corner of the world who work with children and reading and books. I so admire their passion and intelligence. (and their ability to switch between two or three or more languages).

Prior to the first day we were so privileged to hear about the IBBY Children in Crisis projects with: Patsy Aldana (former IBBY President, and former President of the IBBY Foundation and IBBY Trust),  Basarat Kazim (IBBY Pakistan), and Shereen Kreidieh  (IBBY Lebanon). I will talk about this session in more detail over the coming days.

Basarat Kazim (IBBY President) shared an inspirational short film - I asked her later if there might be a way to view and share this with a wider audience. This is not the film she shared but it is another showcasing her work in Pakistan. Basarat, in her role as president, delivered several inspirational speeches throughout the Congress especially around the theme "Listening to each other's voices".

OPENING CEREMONY 

During the opening ceremony we heard from Monica Ittusardjuat (Inuit) a Residential School survivor who grew up in a time when Inuit lived a subsistence way of life, moving camps and following animals where they were plentiful. Monica shared the story Lighting the Qulliq a wordless picture book showing a grandmother and granddaughter from long ago lighting a qulliq, an Inuit lamp that provides light and warmth to the Earth. It was a hugely emotional moment when she lit a qulliq on the podium.

In the second part of the Opening Ceremony we heard from Honourable Senator Kristopher Wells, PHD. Kristopher is an educator and champion of the 2SLGBTQI+ community who has used research and advocacy to help advance diversity, equity and human rights in his home province of Alberta, across Canada, and around the world. His focus was this year’s theme of Gender, Sex, and Sexuality in children’s literature. As part of the 40th IBBY World Congress, we were given the catalogue (included in our conference bags) and we were able to peruse the exhibition titled Reading with Pride: Stories for Everyone. Reading with Pride features over 300 2SLGBTQ+ children’s picture books, originally collected by Senator Wells and expanded through a call to Canadian publishers. I did spy some Australian titles in the book display such as 'Who's your real mum' by Bernadette Green and 'My shadow is Pink' by Scott Stuart. You can hear Kristopher talking about the collection here.

Here is the conference bag and its contents including the Reading with Pride catalogue

Extra sessions and Closing Ceremony:

Sydney Smith Hans Christian Andersen winner 2024

Jon Klassen winner of the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award 2026

Michel Chikwanine 

David A Robertson

Here are the sessions I attended (I will share more details about many of these in further posts):

PP 02 INCLUSIVE CLASSROOMS AND LIBRARIES: BEST PRACTICES

Discovering Lifesaving Books Elena Perikleous Commissioner for the Protection of Children’s Rights, IBBY Cyprus 

Developing a Critical Analysis Framework for Picture Books About Children on the Move Tess Prendergast University of British Columbia, Canada 

An Expansion to the APALA Rubric to Evaluate AAPI Youth Literature (Asian American and Pacific Islander Youth Literature) Filipino Diasporic Texts in Focus Cheeno Marlo D. Sayuno University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the University of the Philippines Los Baños, Philippines 

An Exploration of Classic Children’s Literature through the Lens of Humanistic Education Nasser Yousefi Independent, Canada (texts: Pippi Longstocking, Pinocchio, Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, and The Little Prince).

 PP 04 LISTENING TO VOICES IN NON-FICTION

Listening to the Sea: Exploring the Fascinating World of Ocean Wildlife with Non-Fiction Picture Books Sabine Fuchs Independent Researcher, Austria 

Books Without Borders: Representing Migration in Non-Fiction for Young Readers Ana Margarida Ramos University of Aveiro, Portugal 

The Power of Voice: Analyzing Puerto Rican Representation in Children’s Biographies Aura E. Gonzalez Robles Universidad de Puerto Rico, Puerto Rico Ruth J. Saez Vega Universidad de Puerto Rico, Puerto Rico Adriana N. Sotomayor Pérez The Ohio State University, US

PP 06 IMMIGRANT EXPERIENCES: BELONGING AND IDENTITY

 

Transnational Narrative and Poetic Justice in Children’s Novels by Asian Diaspora Authors in the West Fengxia Tan Nanjing Normal University, China 

Shaping Identity through Memory in Iranian Diaspora Children’s Picture books Maryam Mohammadkhani Independent Researcher/Writer, Canada 

From Looked-At to Heard: Voice, Power, and Immigration Narratives in YA Fiction Aleksandra Strelcova IBBY Lithuania

PP 12 LISTENING TO MIGRANT AND REFUGEE VOICES  

Lonesome Child Refugees – Too Uncomfortable Narratives? Jaana Pesonen University of Helsinki, Finland 

Forgotten Border Crossings: Rethinking Childhood, Belonging, and Unbelonging for North Korean Defectors Yoo Kyung Sung University of New Mexico, USA 

  

 PP 23 REIMAGINING CITIZENSHIP 

Voicing Citizenship: Children’s Civic Agency in Schools, Museums, and Literature Justyna Deszcz-Tryhubczak University of Wrocław. Poland

The Plural Identity of Brazilian Children’s Literature Maria Carolina Nunes Gobbo University of São Paulo, Brazil

  

Between Critical Hope and Moral Ambiguity: Picture books Mediating Cross-Conflict Youth Dialogue Chang Li University of Padova, Italy

DINNER

Hans Christian Andersen Award Dinner - Michael Rosen and Cia Gao.  Michael Rosen gave a fabulous speech - I do hope it is republished by IBBY either on their web page or in Bookbird. 

EXHIBITIONS

The congress also presented an exhibition for the Hans Christian Andersen Award 2026 by some of the most distinguished voices in contemporary children’s literature, whose contributions have made a lasting international impact. Works by winners, author Michael Rosen (United Kingdom) and illustrator Cai Gao (China). Alongside them, the exhibition highlighted books by shortlisted authors: Ahmad Akbarpour (Iran), María José Ferrada (Chile), Timothée de Fombelle (France), Lee Geum-yi (Republic of Korea), and Pam Muñoz Ryan (United States). Along with the illustrators Beatrice Alemagna (Italy), Linda Bondestam (Finland), Gundega Muzikante (Latvia), Walid Taher (Egypt), and María Wernicke (Argentina). 

Other exhibitions - 2025 IBBY Collection for Young People with Disabilities: IBBY-UNESCO Collection of Remarkable Books in Indigenous and Endangered Languages; The IBBY Collection of 

Children’s Books from and about Palestine (A map for Falasteen); and 25 years of the Governor General's Literary Award Winners (Canada). The exhibitions were staged over three venues and so I sadly missed a couple - The Panda Awards and Folktales reimagined from UAEBBY.

Honour titles I have talked about here: Picasso and the Greatest Show on earth by Anna Fienberg (Australia); Simon sort of says (Canada); The eyes and the Impossible (translation to Dutch); Then and Now by Datsun Tran (Australia); Frindle Files (translation to Turkish); Not Nothing (USA); and Medusa (Translation to Greek). I also spied Silverborn by Jessica Townsend translated into Norwegian. 

On the Canadian Governor General's award stand I spied: The Probability of Everything (one of my top books); Stand on the sky; The Crazy man; Sweep the story of a girl and her monster; and Airborn (Kenneth Oppel).

Sessions I missed that I wish I had attended:

PP 11 WAR AND TRAUMA 

Listening to the Whispers: Giving Voice to Young People in the Midst of War Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch Independent Author, Canada

Kan Yama Kan: Building Libraries, Bridging Voices, and Healing Through Books Marwa Al Aqroubi UAEBBY, UAE  

Stories of Hope: Literature Workshops for War-Witnessing Children amid Ongoing Instability in Tehran Hooria Rezaei Ruhr-University Bochum, German

PP 10 MIGRANTS: WORDLESS PICTUREBOOKS AND THE LAMPEDUSA PROJECT 

A Very Powerful Silence Deborah Soria Silent Books—Final Destination Lampedusa IBBY Project, Italy 

Listening to Silence: Building Bridges to Understanding with the IBBY Silent Books Collection Jared S. Crossley The Ohio State University, USA Lisa Pinkerton The Ohio State University, USA

The Narrative Aesthetics and Cross-Cultural Characteristics of Wordless Picture books Qingzhi Zhu Nanjing Normal University, China

I wrote heaps of notes but here are two quotes which resonated with me:

Small Stories Connect the Vast World. 

Delicious and Nutritious Children's books are Food for the Soul.

IBBY 39th Congress 2024, Trieste Italy

I was so lucky to attend the 39th IBBY Congress in late August. There were 650 delegates from around the world and with keynotes, over 100 Oral sessions, round tables, award presentations, and also over 100 posters to peruse. This reel will give you a flavour of the congress and if you watch it carefully you might spy me and my friend Dr Robin Morrow!

Keynotes: 

• Michael Rosen 'Literature as a Driver of Change' - check out my previous post.
• Roberto Piumini 'The Words to Say'
• Telmo Pievani 'Disseminating Science in Children's Books'
• Stanislas Dehaene 'Reading in the Brain' and Kate Nation 'Reading for the Brain'

Round Table (there were several but this is the one I attended):

• Picturing Picture Books: a conversation about history, critic, censorship and poetic perspectives on the topic - Leonard Marcus

Awards presentations:

• IBBY-Asahi Reading Promotion Award ATD Fourth World’s Street Libraries, nominated by IBBY France. Read more here. 

Over 60 ATD Street Libraries can be found throughout France, the majority being located in “priority neighbourhoods” as defined by the French Government. ATD stands for All Together in Dignity. The programme has grown out of ATD Fourth World's conviction that the most effective way to support children to break out of the cycle of poverty is to nurture their desire to learn, and to assist in the development of their creativity.

• IBBY-iRead Outstanding Reading Promoter Award. Read more here.

The Award aims to encourage further investment by individuals, organizations and governments in the promotion of children’s reading and will stimulate educational innovation, give much greater access to children’s books and an enhanced profile for children’s reading promotion – key tools in global, social, economic and cultural development – all in the context of Article 17(C) of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The winners of the 2024 IBBY-iRead Outstanding Reading Promoter Award are: Ms Basarat Kazim from Pakistan, nominated by IBBY Pakistan, and Ms Irene Vasco from Colombia, nominated by IBBY Canada. 

• Hans Christian Andersen Award - Sydney Smith and Heniz Janisch Read more here.

Here is my previous post about the 2024 short listed authors and illustrators. You can read Sydney Smith's acceptance speech here which he presented at the Hans Christian Andersen award dinner in Trieste.

• 2024 IBBY Honour List - this was a terrific part of the congress and I was cheering loudly for our Australian titles but also for the fabulous books from Canada! Read more here. And watch the video.

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. 

Tiger Daughter

My Strange Shrinking Parents

Some personal Oral Session highlights:

• Let Fiction be part of every school subject - Sweden
• The right to remain silent: wordless picture books as drivers of social and linguistic change in an Early childhood setting - Norway
• Respecting children's names and cultural roots - USA
• Museums as actors of change in promoting children's books - Italy
• Parents book-reading to preterm born infants in Neonatal Intensive Care - Italy
• Healing power of literature: encouraging teenage boys in Juvenile Detention in reading and writing - Turkey
• Reading with newcomer children: an IBBY Canada 'Reading Club' for immigrant and refugee children aged 5-12 - Canada

Sadly, there was no bookshop at the congress but there were displays of the Honour books, the silent books, art from Roberto Innocenti (HCAA 2008), books by Gianni Rodari (HCAA 1970). There was also a very moving display entitled "Sailing across oceans of stories".

While the conference was running at the Convention Center there was also a brilliant exhibition to honour Jella Lepman.

Translation from Italian:

The exhibition is a tribute in images to the intuition of Jella Lepman, who after the horrors of World War II was able to see in books a bridge of relationship to set the imagination in motion again and bring together different geographies; was curated by Silvana Sola, Paola Vassalli and David Tolin, who involved twenty illustrators, ten Italians and ten from the rest of the world, who — as Paola Vassalli recalled — "have created works full of life and movement, confirming that all art is a practice of depth and movement even when it speaks to us from the pages of a book, even and especially when he speaks to the youngest." The artists gave substance to all the most important aspects of the life of the founder of IBBY, a true revolutionary: "revolutionary," said Silvana Sola, "was to think that books were bridges, that they were the necessary response to the difficulties of German children who had come out of a devastating war in body and spirit. It was revolutionary to move on an international level, seeking alliances between the powerful of the earth and fellow travelers. It was revolutionary to create, together with others, an association that provided good practices to spread good books and reading. An association that operates in many parts of the world and that today meets in the 39th Congress that opens."

The walls of the exhibition were filled with quotes from Jella Lepman and illustrations described above.

"It became increasingly clear to me that I should not look backwards, but forwards, and that I should start with the children ... what about children's books. Oh there were practically no children's books left at the end; those are needed more than anything else."

Here are a few more:

The other half of this exhibition consisted of book plates with work by contemporary illustrators and their interpretation of classic children's books such as Pinocchio; Pippi Longstocking; Winnie -the-Pooh; Emil and the detectives; Heidi and Little Lord Fauntleroy. You can see a few in this Facebook reel. The books featured in the book plates were the books Jella Lepman displayed in her famous 1946 exhibition.

We are looking for ways to introduce children in Germany to the children's books of other nations. German children have almost no books left after the children's and youth literature of the Hitler era was eliminated. Educators and publishers also need books from the free world for their orientation. Children are not to blame for this war, so let your books be the first messengers of peace! They are to be compiled into an exhibition that will first travel to Germany, and later perhaps to other countries. To overcome foreign language difficulties, we ask above all for picture books and illustrated books. But good narrative literature should also be made accessible to the children in group work. We hope that German publishers will be able to acquire the translation rights to many of these books. We also ask your country for children's drawings and children's paintings. These pictures speak an international language and will delight the children. (Lepman 1964, 51 f.)

Take a look at our IBBY Australia web page. We love to welcome new members.

The 40th Congress will be held in Canada. I love their poster with an image by The Fan Brothers.

The theme of the 40th IBBY World Congress is “Listening to Each Other’s Voices,” expressed as “Écouter la voix de l’autre” in French and “Pizindàdidà Ekidong” in Algonquin. In a world that is often divisive, this theme speaks to IBBY’s core values of plurality and inclusion and will anchor the Congress programming. Diverse voices will engage with six intersectional topics: disability; gender, sex, and sexuality; migrants, immigrants, and refugees; Black, Indigenous and People of Colour; mental health; and sustainability in children’s literature and reading promotions. ... The public will be invited to participate in free events for children’s literature fans of all ages, including an exhibition titled “From Sea to Sea to Sea: Celebrating Indigenous Picture Books,” which will highlight 175 beautiful, thought-provoking Indigenous picture books published in Canada over the past 40 years, and a boisterous book parade followed by a picnic and read-alouds of great books from across the Americas!

“Holding the 40th IBBY World Congress in Canada is fantastic for Canadian creators and publishers,” says Stephanie Wells, Executive Director of the Canadian Children’s Book Centre. “Canada is well-situated to act as host to passionate advocates for children’s books from around the globe, as we boast a strong children’s book community that creates world-class books. The Congress will also shine a spotlight on Canadian authors, illustrators, and publishers and amplify the diverse voices that are represented in Canadian books.”