Under the Spell of the Moon

The illustrated picture book is one of the most important genres of children’s literature. Great artists have devoted some or all of their working lives to creating art that accompanies a text written for children. While book illustration has been practiced for thousands of years, picture book illustration is a relatively new phenomena.

IBBY (the International Board on Books for Children), at the heart of whose mandate lies the promotion of books of the highest quality, has been honoring illustrators through the Hans Christian Andersen Awards for nearly forty years. IBBY has also been helping to support the spread of book illustration for children to countries and cultures where such artistic activity is relatively new. In honor of IBBY’s work and to support its future work, many of the world’s greatest illustrators for children have donated art based on a text of their choice drawn from their childhood and culture. The result is a book that celebrates art created for children from around the world. The texts in the book are in both the original language and in English. Noted author and editor Stan Dragland has translated the texts.Groundwood Books will pay a royalty of 15% of all sales to IBBY.