Learn more about the guest speakers, readers, and presenters from the International Youth Literature Collection’s launch for the International Children’s Book Day event.

David Jacobson

David Jacobson is a writer and Japanese translator. A board member of the Global Literature in Libraries Initiative since 2017, he chairs the 2021 GLLI Translated YA Book Prize committee. He is the author and edited the translation of Are You an Echo? The Lost Poetry of Misuzu Kaneko. While a journalist in the print and broadcast media, his news articles and TV scripts appeared in the Associated Press, The Washington Post, The Seattle Times, The Japan Times, and on NHK and CNN. He is currently working on biographies of two little-known women who helped reshape the world after World War II: Jella Lepman and Beate Sirota Gordon.

Kristina Cordero

Born and raised in New York City, Kristina Cordero is translator, writer and academic who divides her time between New York and Santiago, Chile. She holds an undergraduate degree in Romance Languages from Harvard College and a PhD in Engineering from Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. For twenty years she has worked in publishing and the arts as a journalist, writer, translator and researcher. She has translated over twenty-five books, including fiction, nonfiction, children’s books, and books on art and architecture. She is the writer-researcher of several travel guides, and is the author of Didi recorre Nueva York (Ediciones B, 2013), a children’s book that she adapted to different digital formats for her doctoral project, for which she and a small team invented and built digital literacy tools for primary schoolers. Presently she works on a range of reading, writing, research and translation projects, and is an adjunct professor at Brooklyn College, CUNY.

Anna Maria Czernow

Dr. Anna Maria Czernow specializes in the theory and history of literature for young readers. She has authored over 20 articles and book chapters (the last two in English being “The King of Misrule.” In Child Autonomy and Child Governance in Children’s Literature. Eds. Christopher Kelen and Björn Sundmark. London, New York: Routledge, 2017 and Mary Poppins, Mr. Inkblot and Pippi Longstocking as Three Embodiments of the Fool Figure. In “Filoteknos” 9/2019), and edited the English translation of Janusz Korczak’s works entitled How to Love a Child and Other Selected Works. London, Chicago: VM, 2018. She served on the jury for several literary and theatre contests, the last one being the “Warsaw Literary Award” (2018–2020). Since April 2015, she is President of IBBY Poland. Since 2018 she translates Swedish literature, first of all for children and young adults.

Annette Y. Goldsmith

Annette Goldsmith Dr. Annette Y. Goldsmith is the co-editor, along with Theo Heras and Susan Corapi, of Reading the World’s Stories: An Annotated Bibliography of International Youth Literature (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016). She is the librarian for the Sephardic Temple Tifereth Israel in Los Angeles and teaches online graduate classes in children’s literature and librarianship for the Kent State University School of Information. A passionate proponent of international youth literature, especially translations, Annette is a board member of the Global Literature in Libraries Initiative (GLLI) https://glli-us.org, a nonprofit that works to raise the profile of international literature in libraries. She was proud to serve on the 2019 (inaugural) committee for the GLLI Translated YA Book Prize and to chair the 2020 committee. She is currently a member of the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC) 2022 Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Award committee.

Roger Mello

Roger Mello is the winner of the 2014 Hans Christian Andersen Award. Known as the Nobel Prize of children’s literature, the award is given by the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY). He has illustrated over 100 titles, 30 of which he also wrote. He has received numerous awards in Brazil and abroad for his work as an illustrator and writer such as the Chen Bochui International Children’s Literature Award as the best foreign author in China. In 2017, his books became published in the US to immediate acclaim: You Can’t Be Too Careful! was named among the seven best books by Kirkus, one of the four best children’s books translated in the United States, a Mildred L. Batchelder Honor Book, and named to the USBBY Outstanding International Book list. Griso, el Único, translated into Spanish, was included by the Cuatrogatos Foundation among the 20 best books in Spanish language in the United States the same year. He is considered “Hours Concours” by the Fundação Nacional do Livro Infantil e Juvenil – Brazilian IBBY section.

Sophie van der Linden

Born in Paris in 1973, Sophie is a specialist in children’s literature, picture books in particular. Her several essays, some of them translated in Italian, Portuguese, Spanish or Chinese, are acclaimed as preeminent references in the field of children’s literature.

She is the founder and the chief editor of the magazine Hors-Cadres (“out of frames”, 2007), which is the only one publication focused on picture books in France, with translations in Spain (Fuera de Margen, Pantalia) and China (Within Pictures Beyond texts, TBH Publishing).

She currently gave courses and conferences in France and abroad, for librarians, teachers, professional readers, authors and illustrators. As a teacher and speaker, she gives courses for students in universities (France, Spain, Brazil), and in art schools (École Condé Paris).

In 2001, she received the children’s literature critics award from Charles Perrault’s Institute (France). From this time, she is frequently called in international jury of illustration (Bologna/Frankfurt book fair, SM Fundation…) and literary awards (Chen Bochui, Prix Vendredi…)