Several books in the Brazilian Portuguese SDG Book Club’s catalogue. Image: SDG Book Club Portuguese Brazil
By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson
See also:
IPA’s 33rd International Publishers Congress: Previewing Day Two
IPA’s 33rd International Publishers Congress: Day One Highlights
Our Complete Coverage of the Work of the International Publishers Association
Our Complete Coverage of the SDG Book Club
Brazil’s Portuguese SDG Book Club
This week, as delegates to the International Publishers Association‘s (IPA) 33rd International Publishers Congress are gathering here in Jakarta, the SDG Book Club Portuguese chapter in Brazil has announced a government requisition of some 500,000 books including 26 titles from the club.
The SDG Book Club has been a cooperative effort between the International Publishers Association and the United Nations Outreach Division. The program was announced during New York City’s UN Week in 2018 and issued its first reading list at the Bologna Children’s Book Fair the following April, in 2019.
The program has issued successive reading lists for students, each list grounded in one of the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)—a program associated with the series of events now represented in Sharm El-Sheikh’s production of COP27.
That first list in 2019 at Bologna, was focused on the No. 1 goal, with children’s literature responsive to the world body’s goal to “end poverty in all its forms everywhere.” At this year’s Bologna, the Brazilian Publishers organization headed by Fernanda Dantas featured a display of SDG Book Club titles in Portuguese.
A Portuguese SDG Book Club was formed in 2020, with a chapter in Brazil and one in Portugal and was activated in June 2021. The Brazilian chapter featured the cooperation of the Brazilian Book Chamber (CBL), the National Foundation for Children’s and Young People’s Books (FNLIJ)—the Brazilian section of the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY)—and the Brazilian Federation of Librarians Associations (FEBAB) in overseeing the selection of 175 Brazilian literary works from an original registration of more than 1,100 titles.
The New Requisition: 26 SDG Book Club Titles
The video above is from the Portuguese SDG Book Club in Brazil and lays out the objectives involved.
Today (November 7), we have news that the municipal secretariat for education in São Paulo has issued a request for the acquisition of selected books for the SDG Book Club in Portuguese.
The goal of this new purchase is to acquire books for the Brazilian project “My Library,” as well as initial and complementary collections, literary projects, and training books for educational units and central education bodies.
The distribution of the content involves 30 copies of each of the 26 books selected for the SDG Book Club Portuguese chapter being donated to elementary-grade educational units, a total tender coming to some 500,000 copies.
And while the International Publishers Association is seated here in Jakarta, sustainability will be one of the chief interests, again led in part by Michiel Kolman, the former IPA president who has continued to work closely with the world body.
Kolman on Thursday (November 11), the first day of the conference, will moderate a program called “The Path Toward Net Zero: Are We Ready for an Inclusive, Sustainable, and Resilient Publishing Industry?”
That session features:
- Moderator: Michiel Kolman, senior vice-president at Elsevier and chair of IPA’s Inclusive Publishing and Literacy committee, the Netherlands
- Zakri Abdul Hamid, agricultural scientist, Malaysia
- Kathy Bail, New South Publishing/UNSW Press, Australia
- Andhyta Firselly Utami, environmental economist, World Bank Jakarta office, Indonesia
For more on the Jakarta International Publishers Congress, see our Day One and Day Two previews.
More from Publishing Perspectives on the SDG Book Club is here, more on the Brazilian market is here, and more from us on the International Publishers Association is here. More on Bologna Children’s Book Fair is here, more from us on children’s books is here, and more on world publishing’s trade shows and book fairs is here.
Publishing Perspectives is the media partner of the International Publishers Association.
More from us on the coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on international book publishing is here.