"Open a Book... Open a Door... Open your Mind... to the World” is an annual celebration of International Children’s and Young Adult Literature sponsored by the Wisconsin International Outreach Consortium. The all-day celebration, which was held on Saturday, November 20th, featured three award-winning authors Sylviane Diouf, Rachna Gilmore and James Rumford, and a scholar of Russian History, Kelly Herold. The opening speaker, Megan Schliesman, was a librarian at the UW's Cooperative Children's Book Center. 87 participants from all across the state of Wisconsin and Illinois attended this year’s event.

Held in celebration of International Education Week, a joint initiative of the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Department of Education, the aim of this workshop - designed for teachers, school and public librarians, students and faculty of education and library science - was to encourage the internationalization of school curriculum by incorporating literature about cultures from around the world that depicts unbiased and educated information.

The 2009 Celebration featured Sylviane Diouf, Rachna Gilmore,
Kelly Herold & James Rumford.

In addition to their presentation at the celebration authors Diouf, Gilmore, and Rumford were invited by Jessica Doyle to participate in a “Reading Day”. School children from Albany, Cambridge, Lodi and Madison convened at the Governor’s Mansion on Friday for a one-on-one reading with the author whose book was chosen by the First Lady for her Read on Wisconsin Initiative. For more information contact Rachel Weiss at (608) 262-9224 or rweiss@southasia.wisc.edu.

For a schedule, please click here. For registration, please click here.

International Children's Literature Celebration 2008
with
Meshack Asare, Bodil Bredsdorff, Margarita Engle & Cynthia Kadohata

International Children's
Literature Celebration
2002

with

Ibtisam Barakat, Tololwa Mollel, Kyoko Mori & Suzanne Fisher Staples

International Children's
Literature Celebration
2003

with

Lulu Delacre, Ji-Li Jiang, Rukshana Khan &
Serpil Ural

International Children's Literature Celebration
2004

with