What we do

IBBY SA collaborates with many organisations on a wide variety of projects including those aimed at literacy, libraries and the promotion of South African books for children and young people.  We engage in a number of activities at a national and international level:

  • We offer a platform for noteworthy South African children’s books through the IBBY Honour List of Books display at the biennial IBBY World Congresses. Our members’ choice of the best South African books gives our writers, illustrators, translators and publishers international exposure.
  • Every year we nominate excellent South African book and literacy projects for major international awards like the IBBY Asahi Reading Promotion Award and the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award.
  • We send out newsletters to our members across the world, that include a wide variety of events and opinion pieces relevant to the world of SA children’s literature.

For more than 10 years an annual Training Programme, run in partnership with Biblionef South Africa, has provided wonderful collections of storybooks in all our languages to rural primary schools. With the generous support of the Yamada Bee Company in Japan, hundreds of schools have benefitted. We run a project in collaboration with the Puku Children’s Literature Foundation, headed by Elinor Sisulu, the main objective of which is to involve South Africans in the generation and dissemination of reviews of local children’s books in all eleven languages.