Focus IBBY: 54.4/2016

Introducing the 2016–2018 IBBY Executive Committee

From left to right, back row: Ferelith Hordon, Carole Bloch, Zohreh Ghaeni, Cristina Vargas, Anastasia Arkhipova, and Ellis Vance; front row: Hasmig Chahinian, Wally De Doncker, Evelyn Freeman, Serpil Ural, and Mingzhou Zhang. Not in the picture: Patricia Aldana, Sunji Jamba, Björn Sundmark, and Liz Page.

The 2016–2018 IBBY Executive Committee was elected by the members at the 2016 General Assembly in Auckland, New Zealand on Sunday, 21 August 2016. From nominations submitted by the IBBY National Sections, the following people were elected to serve for the 2016 to 2018 term of office.

Wally De Doncker, from Belgium, was elected to serve for his second term as IBBY President. He trained as a teacher and served as a special teacher of children’s literature. He began writing full-time in 2001, and since then, his books have reached readers in more than thirteen countries in Europe and beyond. For many years, Wally was an active board member of the Flemish Branch of IBBY-Belgium. In 2008 he was elected to serve as a member of the IBBY Executive Committee for the period 2008–2010. He was re-elected in 2010 and served as Vice-President from 2010 to 2012. He is a frequent contributor to publications that deal with the international dimension of children’s literature and is a regular guest in libraries, schools, and other settings where children and adults come to enjoy his readings.

Patricia Aldana, from Canada, was elected President of the 2018 Hans Christian Andersen Award Jury. She was born and brought up in Guatemala and moved to Canada in 1971. In 1978 she founded Groundwood Books with a mandate to publish high-quality Canadian and international children’s books for all ages; she remained the publisher until 2012. She was honoured with the Order of Canada in 2010 and has won prizes in Canada for her work in advocating children’s and adults’ freedom to read. She was elected to the IBBY Executive Committee in 1996 and served for four years. She was later re-elected in 2004 and served for one term as Vice-President before she was elected IBBY President in China in 2006, serving for two terms until 2010. In 2014 she was elected President of the 2016 Hans Christian Andersen Award Jury. Patricia is currently President of the IBBY Foundation.

Anastasia Arkhipova, from Russia, is a well-known illustrator who has been a member of the Moscow Union of Artists since 1986 and a member of Russian IBBY since 2005. She has served on several international juries, including the BIB Jury in 2007, 2009, and 2015; the Nami Island International Concours 2012 and 2015; and the Hans Christian Andersen Jury for the 2012 and 2014 Awards. In 2006 she was elected to the IBBY Executive Committee and served until 2010.

Carole Bloch, from South Africa, is currently the Executive Director of the Project for the Study of Alternative Education in South Africa (PRAESA), an independent research and development unit affiliated to the University of Cape Town. In 2015 she was a founding member and a trustee of the Nal’ibali Trust and in 2014 a member of the South African Ministry of Education reading advisory committee. Under her leadership, PRAESA received the 2014 IBBY-Asahi Reading Promotion Award, and in 2015 PRAESA won the Astrid Lind-gren Memorial Award (ALMA).

Hasmig Chahinian, from France, was born and grew up in Lebanon. She is currently in charge of children’s literature from the Arab World at the international division of the French National Centre for Children’s Literature (Centre national de la literature pour la jeunesse—La Joie par les livres) a service of the French National Library. She served as a member of the IBBY Executive Committee for two terms from 2010 to 2014, from 2012 as Vice President.

Evelyn B. Freeman, from the USA, retired as Dean and Director of The Ohio State University-Mansfield where she served from 2003 until December 2010. She is currently Professor Emerita in the Department of Teaching...