Within two days, a very important event will take place worldwide. It is especially relevant to bring culture to children, and to provide them with dreams, knowledge and fantasy.: On April 2 we celebrate International Children's Book Day. It is promoted by IBBY (an organization created to bring literature to the youngest), and since 1967, coinciding with the date of the birth of Hans Chrisian Andersen, arrives on time for his appointment.
To open your mouth, we present the poster designed especially for the occasion. You see, every year a country is responsible for preparing the promotional image of this Day, as well as the 'message to the children of the world'. This time Ireland has touched him, and in his representation the writer and illustrator Niamh Sharkey has prepared a funny and sweet poster at the same time; and for his part, Siobhán Parkinson (an Irish novelist who writes very attractive books for children), has written the letter that we present below: From the "Letter to the Children of the World" I will extract some paragraphs, not because Do not feel like copying them, but because I would like to take you to OEPLI (the Spanish section of the IBBY), so that you know it and discover everything it is doing for children's books, and for reading, there you can read the entire letter, are you going to miss it?
Readers often ask writers how they write their stories - where do ideas come from? They come from my imagination, replies the writer. Ah, of course, the reader usually replies. But where is your imagination, what is it made of and is it true that everyone has one? ... However, not every imagination has the same things within it. Probably, the imagination of the cooks contains mostly flavors, in the same way that the imagination of the artists will contain mostly colors and shapes. The imagination of writers is mainly full of words. ... For readers and listeners of stories, their imaginations also feed on words. The imagination of a writer works and goes around and shapes ideas, sounds, voices, characters and events until they become a story; This story is not composed of anything other than words, scribble battalions parading through the pages ... This is why the reader is as important to a story as the writer is. There is only one writer for each of them, but there are hundreds or thousands or even sometimes millions of story readers, who read in the same language as the writer or who may even read translations in many different languages. Without the writer, the story is not born; Without all the thousands of readers around the world, the story will never live all the lives it can live.
Finally I tell you that Siobhan explains how stories unite readers throughout this world ... and what humans probably do best (to get involved and join other people through stories), even long before the written narrative.
These days are promising for children's and youth literature, and they should always be, for everything that contributes to the lives of our children, and because their value is incalculable. If you believe it, syou open transmit it to the children, are you ready?
