UW-Madison hosts International Children’s Literature Conference

Four award-winning authors will be guests of honor at a conference on international children’s and young people’s literature in Madison on November 18. The conference, "Open a Door . . .Open a Book . . .Open Your Mind . . .to the World," is now in its sixth year.

Authors Yangsook Choi, Cathryn Clinton, Yona Zeldis McDonough, and Suzanne Fisher Staples have published extensively and are recognized internationally for their work. Also featured at the conference will be Ginny Moore Kruse, former director of UW-Madison’s Cooperative Children’s Book Center and an international authority on children’s literature.

Yangsook Choi was selected as one of the most prominent new children's book artists of 1997 by Publishers Weekly and has illustrated and written numerous books for children.

Cathryn Clinton is the author of several novels for children, including A Stone in my Hand, which tells the moving story of a Palestinian girl in Gaza City whose father is killed in a bus bombing and whose brother turns to violence.

Suzanne Fisher Staples wrote the award-winning book Shabanu. She has worked as a reporter and editor for United Press International. Her most recent novel, Under the Persimmon Tree, is about a girl living on the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Yona Zeldis McDonough was born in Israel and raised in Brooklyn, New York. Her book, The Doll with the Yellow Star, received the 2006 Once Upon A World Children's Book award from the Simon Weisenthal Center and Museum for Tolerance.

Ginny Moore Kruse has chaired or served on many national children’s literature award and distinction committees, including those for the Newbery, Caldecott and Batchelder awards. She is a former public school teacher, school librarian, and public librarian.

On November 17, First Lady Jessica Doyle will welcome Choi, Clinton, and Fisher Staples to the Governor's Mansion. Doyle has included books by all four of the authors as part of her fall 2006 Read On Wisconsin initiative. The authors also will visit Midvale Elementary and Randall Elementary Schools in Madison and Patrick Marsh Middle School in Sun Prairie.

The conference, to be held at the UW Memorial Union beginning at 8:15 a.m., is an initiative of UW-Madison's Wisconsin International Outreach Consortium (WIOC), a consortium of federally-funded Title VI national resource centers. Since the conference’s inception in 2002, authors from around the world have addressed more than 500 teachers, librarians, students, and literature enthusiasts from Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Illinois. The conference is open to the public. Registration and a fee are required. For more information, contact Rachel Weiss at (608) 262-9224 or rweiss@wisc.edu, or visit http://www.wioc.wisc.edu/.

Last updated on 11/13/2006