Reading the World's Stories is volume 5 in the Bridges to Understanding
series of annotated international youth literature bibliographies
sponsored by the United States Board on Books for Young People. USBBY is
the United States chapter of the International Board on Books for Young
People (IBBY), a Switzerland-based nonprofit whose mission is bring
books and children together. The series promotes sharing international
children's books as a way to facilitate intercultural understanding and
meet new literary voices. This volume follows Children's Books from
Other Countries (1998), The World though Children's Books (2002),
Crossing Boundaries with Children's Books (2006), and Bridges to
Understanding: Envisioning the World through Children's Books (2011) and
acts as a companion book to the earlier titles. Centered around the
theme of the importance of stories, the guide is a resource for
discovering more recent global books that fit many reading tastes and
educational needs for readers aged 0-18 years. Essays by storyteller
Anne Pellowski, author Beverley Naidoo, and academic Marianne Martens
offer a variety of perspectives on international youth literature. This
latest installment in the series covers books published from 2010-2014
and includes English-language imports as well as translations of
children's and young adult literature first published outside of the
United States. These books are supplemented by a smaller number of
culturally appropriate books from the US to help fill in gaps from
underrepresented countries. The organization of the guide is geographic
by region and country. All of the more than 800 entries are recommended,
and many of the books have won awards or achieved other recognition in
their home countries. Forty children's book experts wrote the
annotations. The entries are indexed by author, translator, illustrator,
title, and subject. Back matter also includes international book awards,
important organizations and research collections, and a selected
directory of publishers known for publishing books from other countries.
