The 5th Nami Island International Children’s Book Festival (NAMBOOK – 010) will be held from October 1 to November 14, 2010 on Nami Island, Korea. The theme for this year’s festival is Peace Story and the organizing committee recently announced a very special accompanying event: the NAMBOOK-010 Festival Children’s Peace Drawing Contest. Children ages 8 through 12 throughout the world are invited to submit posters that  express their ideas of peace. The deadline for submission of posters is September 10, 2010.

For further details, click on the image above to enlarge and/or visit the NAMBOOK website.

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.