Your favourite IBBY books

Last Wednesday afternoon visitors to the library were greeted with a display of 52 of the best illustrated children’s books from around the World.  We asked you to select your favourite book from the IBBY Honours List display, a task which was clearly very difficult due to the diversity of the collection. Nevertheless, we did have a winner with 6 votes: Skirsiu (I Will Fly) by Ieva Babilaite. This was Lithuania’s entry about a bird born without wings.  A combination of simple illustration, colour, geometric forms, layering and cut-outs encourage the reader to follow the story with little need to understand the language. Although the book is intended for young children, it was clearly a hit with older children and adults. In second place with 4 votes was Rhinocephants on the Roof  illustrated by Dale Blankenaar of South Africa. This is a story about Daniel who is sleeping over at his grandparents house and hears strange and terrifying noises when the lights go out. The illustrations reveal all. They are created with mixed media then scanned and coloured or photographed and assembled using Photoshop.

The following books had 3 votes each:

Pajarario (Book on Birds) by Alejandra Acosta, Chile

The Boring Book by Vasanti Unka, New Zealand

The following books had 2 votes each:

Listopad (The Leaf Fall) illustrated by Nikolay Ustinov, Russia

Bibedombi Szornyhatarozo (Dingy Hill Monsterpedeia) illustrated by Reka Hanga, Hungary

Le Lion et L’Oiseau (The Lion and the Bird) by Marianne Dubec, Canada

Mon Tout Petit (My Little One) illustrated by Albertine, Switzerland

The library intends to purchase these to support students on the illustration courses but they may also be of interest to creative writers and those studying education. If you missed the books in the library, then University of Portsmouth is fortunate to be hosting this touring exhibition for another week. The books will be on show at the CCi Graduate Show in Eldon Building, 5-9 June from 10 am-4 pm.