Tooran Mirhadi and Jella Lepman: Two Women, Two Continents, One Aspiration

This is a printed version of Leila (Roya) Maktabi Fard's 36th IBBY Congress keynote speech. An earlier German version was published in JuLit. An Iranian children's literature researcher, critic, and librarian based in Munich, Maktabi Fard compares and draws parallels between these two exceptional, perseverant, hardworking, and pioneering women who established influential organizations for children's literature, one in the East and the other in the West.