Focus IBBY

Frog Long Shanks A Silent Picture Book from Slovenia

tolerance means respecting and accepting the rich diversity of world cultures, forms of expression and ways of actualizing our humanity. Tolerance is harmony in diversity.

The Slovene festival of children’s literature, Reading under the Straw Hat, that took place in May is the pinnacle of efforts throughout the school year that motivates schoolchildren to read by giving them creative events, workshops, meetings with authors, exhibitions, etc. The 2015 event is the fifth annual festival. The festival is for all, and incentives are adapted to encourage all age ranges and abilities, including vulnerable young people, to discover the joy of reading. The development of intergenerational and intercultural cooperation is a way to emphasize tolerance and coexistence.

This year, one of the central events was the publication of a picture book without words, drawn by the schoolchildren of Primary School OŠ Venclja Perka in Domžale. The story is about a frog with such long legs or shanks that everybody makes fun of it. But when the rest of the frogs are unable to cross a deep chasm along their way, it is Frog Long Shanks that saves the day by solving the problem. The story and the illustrations are made by the children of the class 7B of OŠ Venclja Perka with the help of Vanja Repič, their art education teacher. The author is Gal Pirš and the conceptual author of the illustration is Rok Mlinar Vahtar; Edvina Dedič, Jan Bašič, Gal Pirš, andRok Gošnik made the pictures.

The purpose of this silent picture book is to promote tolerance. The Slovenian section of IBBY initiated the project with the financial support of the Slovenian National Commission for UNESCO. The preparation of the book was organized and then published by Miš Publishing.

The Slovenian section of IBBY will donate copies of the book to the Italian section of IBBY for the children’s library on the island of Lampedusa, where thousands of immigrants arrive every year, including many children. The picture book will also be distributed for free to the immigrant children in Slovenian schools.

This new picture book will tell children—all children from different environments—to be proud of who they are.

Tilka Jamnik
IBBY Slovenia

IBBY Latvia and IBBY The Netherlands Bund-of-Friendship for Twenty Years

the first time we spoke to Silvija Tretjakova, the enthusiastic and inspiring head of the Children’s Book Center in Riga, was in Groningen at the 25^thIBBY Congress in 1996. A year later, I travelled to Riga with the president of the Dutch IBBY section, Jant van der Weg-Laverman, to discuss the plans about the center with one of the directors of the National Library; that was the start of a long bund-of-friendship between our two IBBY sections.

Less than two years later in 1998, with financial support of the Dutch IBBY section, Silvija Tretjakova opened the center in its own building. Since then, we have organized many successful joint projects. In 2015, the Dutch IBBY section supported the Parent Jury project with 5,000 euro; we had also financially supported the project earlier. It is well known that in most reading-promotion activities, it is always the mothers who participate, but we know that it is also very important to show fathers reading aloud and reading for their own enjoyment. Children need to see that their fathers also read for pleasure. The support of Dutch IBBY enabled the Children’s Book Center to encourage fathers to enjoy the project and show that reading is for everyone.

The aim of the Parent Jury project is to strengthen the connections between children and adults by spending some time talking about books with them. There are four age categories in the children’s jury: 5+, 9+, 11+, and 15+. In all these categories, there is a pre-selection of six titles made by specialists (originally Latvian, but also translated books are selected). Next to these categories, there is a category...