Interested in what is happening in Taiwan with respect to children’s and young adult literature? Check out Irene Ying-Yu Chen’s new blog iRead Taiwan and Beyond. Irene is a well respected children’s literature critic and was one of the featured speakers at the recent Asian Festival of Children’s Content. She is also Assistant Regional Advisor for SCBWI Taiwan and we were thrilled to meet her at the 2010 Bologna Children’s Book Fair! As for her new blog Irene says ” This is a blog about literary works for children and young adult in/from/for Taiwan. Cultural diversity, publishing industry, and children’s reading events are here for you.”  Her latest post is a report on a recent reading and literacy forum she attended: New Perspectives on Global Education: Research Trends on Literacy in Children and Adults.

The last booth Aline, Marjorie and I visited at the 2010 Bologna Book Fair belonged to the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators and what a way to end the fair!  We had an absolute blast visiting with the SCBWI members, some of whom we had corresponded with via email before but had never met in person: and we were in for a couple of surprises too.  SCBWI members not only share the same passion for children’s literature as we do at PaperTigers but in two cases share the same first name!  Here’s a special shout out about several of the SCBWI members who made us feel so welcome and took the time to share their work with us.

PaperTigers’ Marjorie (in green) with Marjorie van Heerden, co-Regional Advisor SCBWI South Africa.

Marjorie van Heerden has written and/or illustrated more than 100 children’s books and has been published in 33 languages in Africa, Europe, Canada and the USA.  In 2008 Marjorie won the M.E.R Award for best South African illustrated children’s book.

PaperTigers’ Corinne (in pink) with Corinne Fenton, Assistant Regional Adviser SCBWI Victoria, Australia.

Corinne Fenton’s classic award-winning picture book Queenie: One Elephant’s Story was followed in 2008 by The Dog on the Tuckerbox (shortlisted in the Younger Readers Category of the Australian Book Industry Awards and named a Notable Book in both the Picture Book and Eve Pownall Information Book categories of the Children’s Book Council of Australia Book of the Year Awards for 2009). Her latest book Flame Stands Waiting was released in March 2010.

Yoko Yoshizawa, Assistant Regional Advisor SCBWI Tokyo (more…)

One of my highlights from the 2010 Bologna Book Fair was attending the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award announcement and seeing the winner, Kitty Crowther, who unbeknownst to us had been sitting next to us,  accept the award. The Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award is announced  every year in March and then in  late spring, the ALMA winner visits Sweden and Europe to partake in Award Week: A Spotlight on Children’s Literature. This year Award Week will take place from May 23rd to June 1st and highlights will include:

May 25 ~ Meet Kitty Crowther, House of Culture, Stockholm, Sweden

“If I had to choose one word to describe myself, it would be storyteller,” says Kitty Crowther. Listen to her presentation of her work and her inspiration. Kitty will be joined on stage by  illustration expert Ulla Rhedin and Johanna Lindbäck, one of Sweden’s top literature bloggers, for a program that will showcase Kitty’s work and contextualise her inspiration and development as an artist.

May 26 ~ Presentation at the International Youth Library, Münich, Germany

After a welcome speech by head librarian Dr. Christiane Raabe, German illustrator Judith Drews will give a lecture on the work and importance of Kitty Crowther. Kitty will also present her work.

May 28 ~  Astrid Lindgren Conference, Vimmerby, Sweden

The bi-annual Astrid Lindgren conference in Astrid Lindgren’s childhood town, Vimmerby, gathers academics and scholars to discuss children’s literature and its development. Kitty Crowther will give the key-note address.

June 1 – Awards Ceremony, Stockholm Concert Hall, Stockholm, Sweden

This  evening celebrates Kitty Crowther and her world of images  and also spotlights the importance of children’s literature. The Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award will be presented to Kitty Crowther in front of  1,000 invited guests. Kitty will receive the award amount of 5 million SEK (which makes the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award the world’s largest children literature award) as well as an original work by Swedish illustrator Eva Lindström.  The award will be  presented by H.R.H. Princess Madeleine of Sweden.

For more information on the ALMA Award Week check out the ALMA blog.

After a busy day of presentations on Day 2, Day 3 of the Bologna Book Fair was spent meeting people and absorbing the different books on offer.

First up was a lovely chat with poet Jorge Luján, whom we’d caught up with on the Tuesday evening… He shared his brand new book with us and I will share some photos with you when I work out how to get them off the camera (as opposed to a storage disc)… but in the meantime, enjoy this gorgeous poster for the exhibition of Isol’s illustrations from his recently published Pantuflas de perrito which is on-going until 25th April, if you happen to be in Bologna…

Other highlights included:

The presentation of the International Youth Library‘s newly announced 2010 White Ravens Catalogue:

I had a great discussion with Janet Evans from Liverpool Hope University, UK, who is currently spending some time with the Library in Munich

while…

next door at the IBBY stand, Corinne and Aline had a good chat with Sylvia Vardell, editor of IBBY magazine Bookbird and host of the wonderful Poetry for Children blog (Don’t miss out on her current game of Poetry Tag for National Poetry Month in the US).

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Meeting Danilla Marii, an Australian writer based in Rome, who had come to the Fair to seek out a publisher for her beautiful and vibrant book The Rainbow Tree – it was a real privilege to be able to see the original draft that includes some intricate collage work. We loved the story too.

Catching up with Antoinette Correa from B.L.D. – Bibliothèque Lecture Développement (Senegal)

and Pilli Hamidu Dumea of the Children’s Book Project for Tanzania.

Meeting author/illustrator/stroyteller John Kilaka, an erstwhile winner of the BolognaRagazzi New Horizons Award (for New Friends in 2005), and seeing his new book, The Amazing Tree.

…And of course, the books…

A display of Mitsumasa Anno’s books at Fukuinkan Shoten Publishers‘ stand, including his new Anno’s Journey across Asia – and if you look at the first photograph for this post you should be able to spot it among the White Ravens 2010 selection too…

A display devoted to Jimmy Liao’s books – what a feast of color and imagination they are. Wouldn’t it be great to have more of his books available in English!

And the much-loved Guji Guji by Chih-Yuan Chen in lots of different languages – interesting, also, to see the different illustrations chosen for the covers.

You can see these and more photos from Day 3 here…

One thing I was looking forward to seeing at the Bologna Book Fair is whether or not there would be a focus on electronic books (otherwise known as e-books or digital books) for children. With all the hype about Amazon’s Kindle and Apple, Inc.’s recent announcement that they had agreements with five of the six largest publishers to allow them to distribute e-books on i-Pads, I wondered if this technology would be highlighted at Bologna.

Well….after spending four days at the Fair I didn’t come across anything to do with e-books.  However,  we did come across the books What Lola Wants, Lola Gets! and Tyrone the Clean ‘o’ Saurus (both written by David Salariya and illustrated by Carolyn Scrace, and due to be published later this year by Scribblers Books), which were receiving a lot of attention! These two books are reported to be the first books to use augmented reality technology for young children. Simply put, when you hold certain pages of the book up to a web-cam you see the characters burst vibrantly to life in full 3D animation, accompanied by music! Check out this video to see it in action.

Here’s a close-up of the two books at the show:

and here’s Marjorie having a go…

Click on the images to view them in higher quality over on our Flickr site…

ETA: According to this Publisher’s Weekly article, children’s stories held six of the top 10 paid iPad book-app sales spots as of press time (April 8th).

Following on from Monday’s post, here are some of our highlights from Day 2 of the Bologna Book Fair.

We started out with a children’s theatre production inspired by Vivaldi’s Four Seasons and performed by students from Bratislava’s Academy of Fine Arts – great fun!

The JES: Join – Enjoy – Share session for the International Meeting of Children’s Librarians. They had two very interesting speakers lined up: Ruba Totah from the Tamer Institute in Ramallah, Palestine, which won the 2009 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, talking about their many projects, linking to community and school libraries;

and famous Brazilian author Ana Maria Machado, winner of the Hans Christian Andersen Medal in 2000, who gave a very thought-provoking paper about the lamentably small number of foreign-language books translated into English…

“African Books for Children”, a roundtable session chaired by Viviana Quiñones of the French Centre national de la littérature pour la jeunesse – La Joie par les livres with Phocas Ekouedjin of Afrilivres (Association of African Francophone Publishers) and Tainie Mundondo of Apnet (African Publishers Network), as well as publishers from Benin, Senegal, Tanzania, Cameroon, Mauritius and Rwanda. They discussed the publishing and distribution of African children’s books and profiled recent children’s books published in Africa.

A presentation of the 20-year-old journal Takam Tikou in its new online format. Takam Tikou, published by the Centre national de la littérature pour la jeunesse – La Joie par les livres, focuses on children’s books and reading in Africa, the Arab world, the Caribbean and the Indian Ocean. If you read French, there is a fabulous wealth of material and resources available – definitely well worth exploring.

The announcement of the Astrid Lingren Award – see Corinne’s post. It was very exciting and we really felt we had a stake in it this year, with PaperTigers being a nominating body. The visual presentation of winner Kitty Crowther’s books made me want to read all of them – and also ask myself why I’d never come across her work – well, it turns out only one of her books has been translated into English. What was it that Ana Maria Machado was saying earlier that morning?

Seeing a proof of Allen Say’s new book, The Boy in the Garden - it’s going to be another gorgeous book. Thank you for showing it to us, Christine!

And you can see more photos from Day 2 here…

Well, the Bologna Book Fair has been and gone for another year and once again it passed in a whirlwind of activity. Between an action-packed schedule and internet connection frustrations, we didn’t manage to post quite as often during the Fair as we had hoped, but now we’re back at our desks, we will be presenting various highlights over the coming weeks. So here are some special moments from the first day:

“A Morning of Korean Picture Books Showcasing Family.” The photo shows picture-book writer/illustrator Cho Hae-ran’s brushes and paints, and some of the exquisite little books produced by children she has worked with. I’ll be writing about this whole session properly soon…

The announcements of IBBY’s Awards – see Corinne’s post…

A Q&A session with Shaun Tan and publishing consultant Helen Chamberlain in the illustrators’ café – we’ll definitely have more about that soon too.

The opening of the Poemas de Compañía exhibition, featuring Isol’s illustrations for Pantuflas de perrito, poems by Jorge Luján about pets, based on some workshops he did with children. It was great to see Jorge and a delight to meet Mandana Sadat, illustrator of another of Jorge’s books, Winter Afternoon, a favorite of mine, as well as Jorge’s Spanish and Italian publishers – not to mention the Principessa dei Gelati!

You can see more photos from Day 1 here.

Announced today in Sweden and broadcast live at the Bologna Book Fair,  Kitty Crowther is the recipient of the 2010 Astrid Lindgren Memorial award. Click here to read the press release and click here to see our photos from the announcement. PaperTigers was a nominating body for this year’s Astrid Lindgren Memorial award, the world’s largest prize for children’s and young adult literature, so we were definitely looking forward to the award announcement. We got to the seating area early and it turned out that we were sitting right next to Kitty!  It was most exciting to see her reaction when her name was announced. Definitely one of our highlights from the Fair!

Today at the Bologna Children’s Book Fair the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY) announced the winners of the 2010 Hans Christian Anderson Award. PaperTigers was there to hear the exciting news. We send our congratulations to the winners, author  David Almond, from the United Kingdom, and illustrator  Jutta Bauer, from Germany.

Also announced at today’s press conference was the winner of the  IBBY-Asahi Reading Promotion Award. This award is presented to projects run by groups or institutions that are judged to be making a lasting contribution to reading promotion for children and young people. 12 projects were nominated this year and two winners selected: Osu Children’s Library Fund (Ghana) and Convenio de Cooperación al Plan de Lectura (Medellín, Colombia).

Click here to read the press releases.

Hooray – here we are in Bologna, ready for the start of the Bologna Book Fair tomorrow. We’ve had a wander round the centre and took in both the wonderful children’s bookshop, Libreria per Ragazzi in Via Rizzoli, just round the corner from the Piazza Maggiore, and the public library, which has superb facilities for kids.

The BolognaRagazzi award-winning books were all in the shop window at the Libreria per Ragazzi and we had a chance to browse through them all inside…

Some of Shaun Tan’s books in Italian were on prominent display – and we’re all very excited at the prospect of hearing him speak at the Fair tomorrow…

I asked the staff about their expectations for this year’s Bologna Book Fair and they told me that they had had concerns, because of the current economic climate – but actually, there seems to be a lot of interest and they’ve already had lots of people passing through the bookshop so they’re feeling optimistic.

The bookshop has a superb selection of books in both Italian and other languages (some of which proved irresistible!); there’ s a table and some chairs for small people to browse; and the staff are all pleasant and helpful – what more can you ask for?

We then escaped out of the rain (yes, it’s been raining…) into the Library. The exhibitions are being set up and promise to be worth a return visit. In the meantime, we popped into the children’s library – what a wonderful space and check out that gloriously tall book in the photo!

Then, off the main atrium, we discovered a new service offered by the library, in its own cosy space – Nati per Leggere or Born to Read. In the photo you can just see the edge of the rainbow-striped desk. There’s a small child’s coat hanging on the peg – and the delightful invitation on the door reads, in English, Take your child in your arms and read to him/her…

Tomorrow the Bologna Book Fair itself begins and we’ll be updating the blog through the four days – so stay tuned…