The IBBY Honour List is a biennial selection of outstanding, recently published books, honouring writers, illustrators and translators from IBBY member countries. The IBBY Honour List is one of the most widespread and effective ways of furthering IBBY’s objective of encouraging international understanding through children’s literature.

The titles are selected by the National Sections which can nominate one book for each of the three categories. For a country with a substantial and continuing production of children’s books in more than one language, one book may be submitted for writing and translation in each official language.

Important considerations in selecting the Honour List titles are that the books are representative of the best in children’s literature from the country and that the books are suitable for publication throughout the world. The selection provides insight into the diverse cultural, political and social settings in which children live and grow and it can be used by all those involved with developing educational and literacy programmes and publishing initiatives to develop exemplary “international” collections.

The Honour List diplomas are presented at the IBBY Congresses where the catalogue is introduced and the books are shown for the first time. Thereafter seven parallel sets of the books circulate around the world at exhibitions during conferences and book fairs (see Exhibitions).

Permanent collections of the IBBY Honour List books are kept in Munich (International Youth Library), Zurich (Swiss Institute for Child and Youth Media, SIKIM), Bratislava (Bibiana Research Collection), St. Petersberg (RBBY Central Children’s Library), Tokyo (IBBY), Kuala Lumpur (Book City Corporation of Malaysia), Tucson (World of Words) and, until 2014, in Evanston (Northwestern University Library).