Sheila Ray Obituary

by | Dec 5, 2018 | IBBY NEWS

IBBY UK colleagues were saddened to hear of the death of honorary member Sheila Ray earlier this year.
Sheila and her husband Colin were instrumental in setting up the UK’s first IBBY World Congress in 1982 and both had a long standing connection with IBBY. Sheila was very good at keeping in touch, despite health problems preventing her from attending IBBY functions, and regularly wrote to say how much she enjoyed issues of IBBYLInk.  She sent some illuminating comments in a letter to IBBYLink in 2012 about the position of Australian literature.

 

Ann Lazim remembers: Sheila taught me at Birmingham Poly in the 1970s and in fact it’s partly thanks to her that I became a children’s librarian and certainly thanks to her and Colin, who also taught me, that I knew about IBBY.

 

The Ray papers are now in the archive at Seven Stories though Sheila donated many of her books to the library at Roehampton. She will be missed by all of us.