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Hello! If you haven't yet worked it out from Twitter, the Bologna Book Fair is rumbling along right now, as I type! It's the biggest children's book event of the year, when more people than you can count all gather to buy and sell foreign rights to publish every picture book you can imagine. I went one year, the fair was amazing, and so was the GELATO. Publicist Nina Douglas and I were too busy to go this year, but we were feeling a bit sorry for ourselves, so made our way to sunny Soho and had a quick moment of make-believe at Amorino:



The book fair hasn't designated a hashtag on Twitter for everyone to follow, so people are all over the Internet. You can click on #BolognaBookFair, #Bologna2012, #BBF2012 and even #BBF12 to see moment-by-moment what's going on.

And we at the Fleece Station studio are represented! Walker Books has a taster brochure for Gary Northfield's upcoming comic-strip story TEENYTINYSAURS. I've been watching him work on it and oo-ing and ah-ing, it is amazing. Go ask about the rights, people at Bologna!



Just as all this has been going on, we got a lovely e-mail from some Portsmouth University students - Ryan McBride, Matthew Freeman Carter, Mitchell Jackson, Dale Bennett and Steven Ellis at 32RunProduction - with a video they'd made about our studio! So presenting... The Fleece Station, the Movie!


YouTube link

And look! Here's a little teaser for my next picture book! I don't know how much I'm allowed to say yet, but this image is in Scholastic UK's Bologna rights guide brochure, so I think I'm allowed to post it:



Back to the lovely TEENYTINYSAURS...



And good friend of the Fleece Station, Philip Reeve, also has a very exciting book just out with Scholastic UK! I've read GOBLINS and it is brilliant. Martin Chilton at The Telegraph thinks so, too! Here's his rave review...



And back to gelato, what everyone's really thinking about in Bologna. Now it's back to the drawing desk for me, to crack on with that picture book! Ooh, the deadline's not far off now...

The Publishers Association has warned publishers over a directory fraud, which appears to offer a free listing in the guide to the Bologna Book Fair, but in fact could charge publishers almost $2,000.

read more

A highlight of the Bologna Book Fair is children’s book illustration. There is a wonderful Illustrator’s exhibition in the front hall, which will go on an international tour after the fair closes.

Slovakia was the Guest of Honor country at the illustrators’ exhibition. It was fascinating to see all the Slovakian children’s book illustrations.

Here is a section of the illustrator's wall (around the corner from the exhibition):

  
A close up of the wall.     
 

Illustrators post samples of their work on this long wall, which most people will walk by on their way to the exhibition halls.

A lot of illustrators come to the fair to show their illustrations. Many aspiring illustrators carried around their portfolios and showed their work to publishers. Some booths post hours for illustrators to drop by their samples. (Writers don’t pitch at this fair.)

I have to mention Korea, as their books are having a noticeable influence on the international world of children's literature. The Korean industry is a great example of how publishers work together (with the Korean Publisher's Association). They have a wonderful "collective stand." This year one of the things they did was collect books around themes and display the books thematically.
For example, one theme was tigers and they displayed dozens of books, from many publishers, with tigers on the covers.
Here is the front of a pamphlet they handed out at their stand. (Many stands hand out a flyer that promotes their books. Catalogs are also available.)


The inside of this accordion-folded pamphlet shows 18 pages/illustrations of tigers from different books (about 15 publishers.)  Because of potential copyright issues I won't show a photo of the inside.

I wish more Korean books (and books from other countries around the world) were available in the US. I also wish I had more time to share what I saw about books in different countries.

Which brings me to--
The International Youth Library (Internationale Jugendbibiothek) which had a booth. This is the largest library for international children’s literature in the world with almost 600,000 children's books. Sounds like heaven, doesn't it? They have a huge study library, where most of the books are. (You can apply for a scholarship to study at the library for a few months.) Their booth showed The White Ravens, 250 notable books from around the world which the library selects and showcases. What an incredible selection of books. This library had a must see booth. Plus, it was an easy way to get a view of international children’s books from last year.

(Publishers and writers send in their books--the whole collection is donated. So you might want to make sure your books are in this library. Maybe send them a copy of your book if they don't own it.)

I plan to visit this library while I live in Germany, as it is about 5 hours away in Munich.

Book sightings:

Library Lions (in Spanish, on the right) by Michelle Knudson in t

Entrance to the fair

I went to two international book award ceremonies yesterday!
IBBY (International Board on Books for Young People) announced their 2010 Hans Christian Andersen Award winners. David Almond won the author award and Jutta Bauer won the illustrator award. It was cool to see the ceremony. If you aren't familiar with IBBY go check out their website. They are an incredible organization who does a lot of projects throughout the world with literacy.

The prize-giving ceremony for the BolognaRagazzi Awards was held downtown in the Sala Borsa library. Talk about atmosphere.


This library is hundreds of years old. The presentation was held inside an arched room, with painted walls and a roof with curved glass panels. Downtown Bologna has a nice open area with two connected piazzas, surrounded by this library, an unfinished church and palaces.

Tomorrow another important award will be announced in Sweden: the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award.

These awards are some of the most important international awards given in children’s literature.

Also in the fair:
SCBWI has events planned continuously at their booth.

A popular one was the dueling illustrators with Doug Cushman and John Shelley. Text was read and they had 2 minutes to sketch that scene. Then another segment of text was read. They dueled for over half an hour.

I was able to walk through most of the exhibition halls the first day. They are organized mostly by language and country. I've made a few book sightings--books by authors I know. Though the booths are filled with books, some books, including some that were recently released or will be released soon are not in the publishers' booths because of the way rights work. In many cases agents are here (or have representatives here) and are working on selling rights to other countries.

I'll take more photos and show more of the fair tomorrow.

~Sarah
Sarah Blake Johnson
http://sarahblakejohnson.blogspot.com/

Monday was the SCBWI Bologna Symposium. (SCBWI is the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators.) This was an international SCBWI conference which is held every other year in conjunction with the Bologna Book Fair.

There was a stellar line up of speakers, including Steve Mooser, one of the founders of SCBWI. Other speakers included Leonard Marcus, a children's book historian and author. He has served on several award committees, such as the National Book Award, and gave an interesting talk about children’s book awards.

This was my first time hearing Richard Peck speak. He is an incredible speaker! Wow. It was excellent.

 
Me and Richard Peck. We visited for about 20 minutes last night at an evening buffet in a bookstore in downtown Bologna.

Ellen Hopkins spoke to writers and did a workshop, while Frane Lessac did a workshop with the illustrators. There were also First Look and First Pages panels, where illustrations were shown and opening pages read. Agents and editors and art directors gave feedback. It was interesting to hear so many pages so quickly and to hear and see the agents' reactions.

A panel of seven publishers talked about publishing today, which was fascinating as they ranged from Gita Wolf of Tara Books whose company in India makes handmade books to Stephen Roxburgh of Namelos who has a new publishing model.

I got to meet Gita Wolf, a publisher, in person, which was nice as I did an interview with her for the conference about a month ago.

 

Her amazing book, Do!, received the prestigious
New Horizons BolognaRagazzi Award.
Do! is a work of art.



The symposium was a fairly intimate conference, which made it easy to meet and visit with all those who presented (authors, agents, editors) as well as all the other writers and illustrators. I’d estimate about 100 people or so were in attendance. Writers and illustrators came from all over the world, from places as far away as South Africa, New Zealand, Japan, and Brazil.

In the comments yesterday olmue  asked about how it works to buy a book in a foreign language and if ARCs (advanced reader copies of the book) are read at the fair. I'm sure each publisher and editor and scout does it a little different, but if a book is "hot" and competition is intense, they will take the ARC back to their hotel room and read at night. Many books are taken home and read later.

As to books in foreign languages--there are summaries available, plus the agent or publisher will pitch the book to the publishers or buyers. Often there are book summaries/pitches on

Hi. I’m Sarah Blake Johnson.
I’ll be in the Tollbooth next week blogging about the Bologna Book Fair and the SCBWI Bologna Symposium.
I want to thank Through The Tollbooth for having me here as their guest.

I plan to post photos, share info about the fair, highlight some publishers in the international community, discover some new authors and illustrators, and explore Bologna.

I’m excited to share my experience with you.

Join me next week while I look at the international scene of kids’ books.

A photo from last year at the Bologna Children's Book Fair. The sketchbooks belong to Miguel, Anah and me. I shall try to keep making posts whilst my technical difficulties continue. The issues I'm having seem to have interrupted what I wanted to do, which was share some of my drawing aims for 2010. Plus, I really like this shot.

Click on drawing to view.

Truck Stuck, Italian Style.

You never know when life will imitate a children's book.

There I was, on vacation in the beautiful Tuscan countryside, resting up after the vigors of the Bologna Children's Book Fair. My traveling companion and I had just picked up our rental car, a Fiat 500, in Florence and were heading south through Chianti country. My Frommer's guidebook mentioned that there was a lovely castle and winery outside of Greve in Chianti, so when we saw the sign for Castello di Verrazzano, we hooked a right and zipped straight up the side of a mountain into wine paradise. We drove into the estate past a large tractor-trailer that was preparing to leave, the only thought in our minds being how many wines we could sample before safely navigating the precipitous road back down to the valley.

Inside the tasting/dining room, a brick-oven fire glowed seductively, and we sampled three lovely wines, accompanied by the most delicious bruschetta ever (just olive oil and salt, but wow). We chatted a bit with the wine guy, bought a bottle of Chianti Classico Reserva, and headed back to the car.

We were greeted by the sight of the tractor-trailer, now jack-knifed and blocking the exit of the parking lot. Its cargo bed, containing about 700 cases of wine headed for the US, was twisted precariously and crushing the cab. All the guests were stuck at the winery until the Italian firefighters arrived to address the situation.

Resigned to our horrible fate, we returned to the tasting room and drowned our sorrows in free wine and cheese. Eventually (the Italians have a very different sense of time than we Americans), the firefighters arrived and attempted to crane the truck's cargo back to equilibrium. Alas, it was to no avail. Next came the forklift attempts to unload some of the heavy pallets, which only resulted in the truck tipping even further in the wrong direction.

Now you would think that with wine in abundance and vehicular entertainment on display (never mind the cute Italian firefighters), that the time would have passed pleasantly. And that was indeed the case . . . for the first five hours. When it became clear that the entire truck would need to be unloaded, by hand no less, before any of us could leave our vinous prison, a certain restlessness set in along with the alcoholic sedation. Though the truck's release seemed imminent, the winery staff sensed our unease and quickly offered us a choice: two free bottles of wine each, or a free dinner. The other American guests took the wine and left, shackled to their schedules and itineraries, but I was raised never to turn down a free meal, especially in a country known for its gastronomic prowess. What followed was a seven-course meal, replete with wine parings. Not to bore you, my dear reader, but take a gander at this:

ANTIPASTO
Mixed plate of salami and other cured meats, paired with the 2006 Vino Rosso

PRIMO
Pasta pappardelle with wild boar sauce, paired with the 2006 Chianti Classico





SECONDO
Roasted pheasant and potatoes, paired with the 2005 Chianti Classico Riserva

CARNE
Steak Fiorentina and mixed-green salad, paired with the 2005 Sassello (a supertuscan)

FORMAGGIO
Pecorino and parmesano reggiano with balsamic vinegar and hot pepper jelly

DOLCI
Apple torte, paired with vin santo, a desert wine

CAFFE
Espresso and cantucci (like biscotti), paired with grappa

After a meal like that, driving was out of the question, so we threw ourselves on the mercy of our hosts and rented a room in a farmhouse down the mountain. As we wobbled and rolled out the door, I thought to myself, maybe I should have told them to let the air out of the tires on the left side of the truck and we could have avoided all this unpleasantness.

************
Yolanda is the editor of Truck Stuck (written by Sallie Wolf; illustrated by Andy Robert Davies), in which two children help a truck get unstuck by letting the air out of the tires.

The children’s book fair that’s been held in Bologna is an interesting kind of fair. It’s been held in Bologna for more than 30 years (I can’t find the date of the first one), and, coming on the heels of the much Tweeted SXSW and TOC, it is a fair that seems positively quaint, with no web 2.0-themed panel discussions, no hash tags, and not much Internet at all. And unlike American trade shows, where librarians and booksellers are part of the picture, this show has almost no schwag (very cool tote bag from the Flemish stand excepted—gone before I could snag one). In my limited experience, Bologna is all about thirty minute pre-scheduled meetings at the fair and chance encounters at surrounding hotel bars and restaurants after the show. A day is meetings, quick lunch, meetings, drinks, loooong dinner, bed. Repeat three times and head for the airport. It turns out to be a very collegial sort of rhythm—rarely have I found myself in the company of more friendly strangers (who did not long remain strangers as a result).

Despite the sense of relative isolation from the desperate hand wringing over the state of our industry (or perhaps because of it), there is something about Bologna that feels very important—even essential—to this moment in the history of books. Being an editor in a position to buy books at Bologna does a number on one’s assumptions about bookmaking. Not only is the content diverse, but many things about the books as physical objects are unique to their countries. I think it’s important to be reminded of this heterogeneity in the face of technology, which often seems relentlessly homogenizing.

So, did you actually do any business at the fair, you might ask. Well, yes, actually. In the Happy category, I actually finished a deal for my first YA novel acquisition at Carolrhoda. It’s a debut and that makes me very happy.  This circumstance is somewhat amusing because not only is it an American book, but the author lives about a mile from me in St. Paul. That his agent and I met to finalize the deal in Bologna is just a coincidence, but I rather like the idea that a book could travel from a meeting at Minnesota SCBWI conference last fall through beers at several St. Paul bars to a legal pad in the agent’s hall at the Bologna fairgrounds. Also Happy was the chance to meet with my counterparts at Andersen Press in The UK, whose books we distribute in the States.  It’s always a pleasure to have a leisurely meeting with people you knew only on a frantic-email basis before. In the Less Happy category, the Brit novel I read giddily between meetings at the fair ended up going to a higher bidder. Better luck next time. I brought home lots of other leads, though, and I trust one of them will fall into place in the coming weeks.

One last thing: I think I am collecting moments like these. I was at a conference in San Diego two months ago when a room full of editors and agents congregating around tables of wine and cheese was suddenly plunged into darkness as the power went out. We didn’t miss a beat, and the schmoozing and boozing went on by the light of dozens of cell phones. In Bologna, I was at a big party hosted by the Dutch in a gorgeous palazzo when a room full of publishing types was silenced as an enormous table of food collapsed dramatically under its own weight. I was standing a couple feet away, and it was seriously shocking.  The silence lasted only seconds though, and waiters descended, messes disappeared, and food reappeared. We all got back to whatever we were talking about. I think these events are apt metaphors for contemporary publishing. Despite power failures and sudden collapses, we continue on all the same. Comforting.

Well, guys, I'm going to shut up shop for a week. I had been hoping to squeeze a cheeky one in(drawing, that is) before leaving for the Bologna Chilren's Book Fair, but that isn't going to happen. In fact I don't think I've drawn since finding out I'd been selected! I'm so excited about this trip. In fact, I feel really excited about things in general right now. It feels like something is happening, I don't know what. Some kind of shift.

My very favourite illustrated children's book is called The Red Tree by Shaun Tan. I've bought so many copies of this book for people (never for a child, though!) over the years. There cannot be another person on this planet who has bought as many copies of this book than me. It's beautiful and perfect. I can't recommend it enough.

Anyway, the reason I'm telling you this because when I was perusing the list of selected illustrators for Bologna 2009, for the millionth time, whose name do you think I found? Yeah. Shaun Tan. Only Shaun Tan. Me and Shaun Tan on the same list. My life is complete.

Some years ago, before I began blogging and drawing daily, I entered a drawing into a competition at the Sheffield Book Festival. You had to draw a character from a children's book. I won the competition, and amongst the prizes was a signed Quentin Blake book. The book is called Angel Pavement and is about a drawing competition! The book ends with this line, that never ever fails to make me feel totally utterly warm and fuzzy inside;

You can't though, can you?

Bye, folks. I'll try and post some photos from Bologna over the next week. And, maybe, I'll draw soon, too. Cheerio, my ducks.

Well, sorry to leave you hanging like that. I've been a little busy. And, I've been struggling with this drawing. It's been a love hate relationship. I've given up on it a couple of times, then I've given in and worked on it some more, then finally, after a couple of weeks, I finished it. It's another drawing from, erm, 'my book' (!). Which is another reason I've been away for so long - getting ready for Bologna. Yikes, folks, it's getting close.

So, click on the drawing to get a better view. Go on, stick your beaks in.

Well, folks. Sorry there's no new drawing this week (I've got one on the go) but I wanted to re post these and to share something with you, too. Yesterday I found out that I have been selected to exhibit at the Bologna Children's Book Fair. Anyone who's involved in children's books will know that Bologna is THE event of the calender. I am so excited, I still can't believe it. I keep checking the website to see if that really is my name. This has been a dream of mine for at least a decade. These are two of the drawings that I submitted.

Also, I'd like to say a big THANK YOU to everyone who visits my blog. I wouldn't have realised this dream if it hadn't been for all the support and encouragement you give me on a daily basis.

Just one more thing, my email has been acting really screwy recently. For anyone who has tried to contact me and hasn't received a reply 'sorry'. I try to get back to everyone within a week, so if I haven't done it's my stupid email account not getting messages through to me. Either, leave a comment here or send me a Flickr mail and I will try and get back to you via my new account.

Check out Cynthia Leitich Smith's interview with agent Tracey Adams here.

Cyn is doing a whole series on the Bologna Children's Book Fair, which has been really informative but is also making me extremely jealous and hungry for pasta and chianti.

Va bene!

Adventures in Burrwood Forest
by John Lechner
Candlewick 2007

We are not amused.

This comic masquerading as a graphic novel for the emerging reader set has nothing going for it. There's no real character development attempted, no plot to speak of, and in the end has too many similarities with Smurfs for my comfort. Seriously, a land of burrs living in the forest with one token girl burr and an old papa burr. True, there is no Gargamel character, but that wouldn't have made this better.

The oddest thing is that Lechner clearly has skills as an artist, because his backgrounds are wonderful, but the main characters are little more than jagged circles, a tiny doodle any kid could have created. The comic originated online apparently and Lechner's personal connection with illustrator Peter Reynolds may hold the key as to how this landed in Candlewick's lap.

Why is this in hardcover?

Why is this at all?