International Textbook day

International Textbook Day is a themed day established by the organization Läromedelsförfattarna (The Swedish Association of Educational Writers). The goal is to highlight the importance of textbooks and to shed light on the inequality in schools.

If you attend school, you should have access to textbooks – it’s a given. But that’s not the case. With the International Textbook Day, we want to shed light on the situation we see today, where many classrooms are completely without textbooks.

We encourage everyone working with textbooks in any way to do something special for textbooks on November 8th and we look forward to seeing textbooks celebrated everywhere!

Background

On November 8, Nils Holgersson and the goose Mårten landed in Västra Vemmenhög after nearly eight months of travel, a journey you probably know as The Wonderful Adventures of Nils.

Selma Lagerlöf's book about the boy who travels across Sweden on the back of a goose is one of the most-read children's books in Sweden. It was published in two parts from 1906–1907 and has been translated into over 60 languages. But did you know that the book was written as a textbook for the geography subject?

Few textbooks have been read by as many people as The Wonderful Adventures of Nils, but many are just as well-written. Selma Lagerlöf's book demonstrates the profound impact a textbook can have.

In the footsteps of Selma Lagerlöf, Nils Holgersson, and Mårten the Goose, we want to highlight the importance of well-written textbooks.

About Läromedelsförfattarna

Läromedelsförfattarna, or The Swedish Association of Educational Writers, organizes authors of educational books and materials in Sweden. Some 1, 700 authors are members of the association.

The aim of the organization is to safeguard the educational writers’ rights by negotiate general agreements with publishers and authorities, and by offering authors legal advice on copyright and contracts.

We offer educational writers a membership community with several different activities, such as courses and meetings. We also provide scholarships for educational writers.