Can children's books help build a better world?

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Debbie_Hepplewhite
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Can children's books help build a better world?

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http://www.theguardian.com/childrens-bo ... ld-sf-said
"Let us set this upside-down world right again by starting with the children. They will show the grown-ups the way to go."

Those were the words of Jella Lepman, a German-Jewish writer who fled Germany in the 1930s and returned after the second world war as the US Army’s advisor on youth issues. She found starving children who desperately needed food, medicine, clothes and shelter.

But Jella Lepman also believed they needed books: great children’s books to help them make sense of their experiences, connect them to the rest of the world, and show them they were not alone. She was convinced that books for young people could create bridges of understanding across the barriers of the world.


Pippi Longstocking: a feminist, an optimist and a free thinker

So she founded an organisation called The International Board Of Books For Young People (or IBBY for short). Its founding members included Astrid Lindgren, who wrote Pippi Longstocking, and Erich Kästner, who wrote Emil And The Detectives. IBBY is now a global body spanning 75 countries from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, and its mission is to promote international understanding through children’s books.
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