Back from the delights and inspirations of Bologna. The books, the events, the meetings, the socialising, the food... where to begin?

Yes, Bologna was good this year, skedaddling away to Italy was a tonic to my work and outlook, a week of frenetic activity in a city and Book Fair that never ceases to inspire and encourage. Publishers seemed quietly optimistic compared to the gloom of last year, I sensed a real tone of confidence in the air from all around. For me Bologna was good before it even began, over these last weeks the approaching Fair was a deadline to focus my energies, hone my stories and produce some new book dummies.

This was my third visit to Bologna (the last time was in 2008), now as then SCBWI ran a biennial Conference/Symposium and had a Stand throughout the book fair. As one of SCBWI's volunteer "Team Bologna" the pace was hectic from the moment I arrived in the city.

First up was the SCBWI Conference on Monday. SCBWI Chairman Steve Mooser started proceedings with Why We're Here, a summing up of the Society, it's aims and goals, unfortunately co-chair Lin Oliver was recovering from illness and unable to make the trip from the US.

SCBWI Meeting at The Hughenden, this Wednesday was packed with authors and illustrators sharing great publishing news from:-

Nina Rycroft’s picture books being sold in the UK and USA,  Mark Thomason’s short listing for the WAYBRA Awards, Wendy Blaxland’s second series of 6 beautiful hardback books How are they Made? Macmillan Young Library with another series coming selling in Australia and the USA to Serena Geddes’ illustrations for  new picture books for New Frontier Publishers, with new books coming from Sue Whiting, Deborah Abela, Jeni Mawter, Chris Cheng  … and much more.

Last year there were nearly 150 published books by SCBWI Australia and New Zealand members.

There’s so much SCBWI Australia & New Zealand news

-the new Silver Kite Awards for regions outside the USA

- the Bologna Book Fair where Australia & New Zealand is represented at the SCBWI Conference by Sarah Foster Publisher Walker Books Australia, Frane Lessac Illustrator coordinator and Frances Plumpton NZ literary agent. 

- Dianne Wolfer (WA) and Corinne King (Victoria), authors  are doing a brilliant job organising the programme of countries presenting at the SCBWI stand at the Bologna Book Fair.

- the Speakers Directory for illustrators and authors on SCBWI Australia & NZ

- and the MAJOR NEWS that the SCBWI Biennial International Conference is at The Hughenden 17-19th September with Kira Lynn USA Publisher for Kane Books being flown in from the USA , Lin Oliver President of SCBWI International, film maker and children’s author and Australian publishers at an event that will promote the community of children’s writers & illustrators.

Look at the SCBWI website for more information: www.scbwiaustralia.org

 SCBWI India

Invites you to

 Writing for Children

Jan 27, 2010, 6-7.30 pm

British Council Library, Kasturba Gandhi Marg, New Delhi 01

For more information and membership enquiries, contact

Jyoti Singh Visvanath, Regional Advisor, SCBWI India

(011-29212017), [email protected]

www.scbwi.org

Charges Rs 100 for members of SCBWI and Rs 200 for non-members

 Susanne Gervay, visiting Australian author and Co-Regional Advisor of the Australian chapter of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI), talks about her journey as a writer of children’s books. She is joined by Sayoni Basu of Scholastic India, who shares her views on the state of children’s publishing in India and the importance of a professional organisation for writers and illustrators. India now has its own chapter of SCBWI and this is its first event.

Susanne Gervay is an award winning Australian author whose children’s and young adult novels have been recognised for their relevance to social justice. They include the recently released US edition of I am Jack, a rite-of-passage book on school bullying; Butterflies, a book that deals with disability and That’s Why I Wrote This Song, a collaborative work with her song writer-singer daughter Tory.

 Susanne has spoken at numerous conferences and festivals including the Beijing Literature Festival, Ubud Writers & Readers Festival Bali, World Burn Congress New York, SCBWI Conference at the Bologna Book Fair. She is on the board of the NSW Writers Centre and is Director of the Kids and Young Adult Literature Festival Sydney. She is also Chair of The Sydney Children’s Writers & Illustrators Network at The Hughenden and Co-Regional Advisor of Society of Children’s Book Writers & Illustrators Australia & New Zealand.

www.sgervay.com www.sgervay.com/blog www.thehughenden.com.au

During our session with the IFLA (International Federation of Libraries Associations and Institutions) in Bologna, both speakers (Patsy Aldana and Viviana Quiñones) stressed the importance of children having access to books which both reflect their experiences and open windows onto other customs and cultures. We were urged to pay a visit to the stand shared by a number of different African publishers, and there we met three very special publishers, all producing books to meet that demand.

The first two were librarians we had met at the session the day before: Antoinette F. Correa from BLD (Bibliothèque-Lecture-Développement) Éditions in Senegal and Pili Dumea of the Children’s Book Project (CBP) for Tanzania.

Antoinette, pictured right with a selection of her books, told me that she set up BLD Éditions to meet the needs of both teachers and pupils, who were crying out for access to good books in their own language. She is a well-known figure in the IFLA, and sees the continued development of libraries as crucial work: as well as publishing books, BLD helps to set up libraries and trains librarians.

Pili, pictured left, is secretary to the CBP for Tanzania, which, again, connects children with books published locally. Last year the CBP was awarded the UNESCO King Sejong Literacy Prize for its work promoting the love of books among children and adults. One eleven-year-old, talking about her school library, following the school’s affiliation to the CBP, said

“I have read most of the books in the school library which helped me learn about different topics through interesting stories told in our own national language, Kiswahili, which is easier to understand than English.”

The third publisher was Bakamé Éditions from Rwanda, who publish children’s books in the national language, Kinyarwanda, which is understood by all Rwandans. They also run various projects to promote reading, including their “Bibliothèque en route” – a rucksack library, which takes books out to children who do not have access to an actual library. It gets a tiny mention on their English pages, but if you read French, there’s more here. Editions Bakamé was the joint recipient of this year’s IBBY-Asahi Reading Promotion Award and this article on IBBY’s website is also an interesting read.

The work these organisations are doing is truly awe-inspiring and it was a real privilege to meet Antoinette and Pili.

Last week, I talked about Patricia Aldana’s address to the International Meeting of Children’s Librarians in Bologna. Our second speaker on that occasion was Viviana Quiñones, who spoke to us about the French national children’s book organisation La Joie par les Livres. After running through its history, she told us about some of their initiatives in promoting children’s books, such as travelling exhibitions of African books and books about the Arab world, the Caribbean and around the Indian Ocean. They also publish two magazines: “La Revue des livres pour enfants” and “Takam Tikou”, which focuses on multicultural books in French.

Of particular interest was what Viviana had to say about their work with libraries and independent publishers in Africa. Like Patricia Aldana, she stressed how important it is for children in Africa to find their own experiences mirrored in the books they read: and to read books that are reasonably up to date and written in their own language. In 1985, internationally renowned librarian Geneviève Patte visited Mali and other African countries, where she found that all the library books were old and in French… In 1987 she set up a service within La Joie par les Livres to collaborate with libraries and the publishers of African children’s books to promote books in the local languages. La Joie par les Livres also trains librarians, which raises the status of the libraries in the eyes of local communities.

Viviana said that there are still challenges, for example, with the distribution of books, but that in the world of African publishing, there are some inspirational stories. Afterwards, she recommended a book to me called Courage and Consequence: Women Publishing in Africa edited by Mary Jay and Susan Kelly and published by the African Books Collective. In fact, I had been sitting right next to Pili Dumea from Tanzania and across the room from Antoinette Correa from Senegal – both librarians turned publisher, whom I’ll be talking about in Part 3…

Continuing with our current literacy focus, and thinking towards World Literacy Day on September 8th, this is the first of three posts focusing on and beyond a session at this year’s Bologna Book Fair…

In my first post following our return from the Bologna Book Fair, I highlighted the session organised by the IFLA (International Federation of Libraries Associations and Institutions). The session was organised by the Netherlands Public Library Association and they called it “Invitation to JES: Join – Enjoy – Share”. Despite not being librarians, Aline and I were made very welcome and we really enjoyed chatting to the librarians afterwards. In fact, the various informal discussions got so lively that we were asked to keep the noise down – well, makes a change! As well as our Dutch hosts, there were children’s librarians there from all over the world: Australia, Colombia, Croatia, France, Italy, Japan, Senegal and Tanzania. The atmosphere was buzzing!

We had two speakers: the first, Patsy Aldana, the current president of IBBY, gave us a fascinating talk entitled “Books as Mirrors” in which she traced the history of Multicultural Book publishing in her native Canada, and in which her own Groundwood Books has been so ground-breaking (for more on multiculturalism in Canadian publishing, see here). It had been a very painful struggle, she said, to define the role of the writer: who could write legitimately about what? Those white people who had been the only published writers of books under the multicultural umbrella would ask, “Why can’t I write whatever I want? Who are you to tell me not to write about your experience?” and were being asked “What right do you have to steal my story – the world you’re describing is not real”.

This situation is now much resolved in Canada but there are still real concerns. “Children need books that are windows and books that are mirrors,” she said: and unfortunately there is uneven access for children to these kinds of books. What happens to children who never see themselves in the books they read; and one step further, what happens when children are not taught to read in their own language? It is an enormous disincentive to the desire to read. She pointed to the work of some “fabulous” small publishers from all over the world and urged us to visit their stands at the fair – such as Tara Books from India, Ekeré from Venezuela, and Editions Bakamé from Rwanda, (which shared this year’s IBBY-Asahi Reading Promotion Award). Small publishers need our support because so often it is their books which give “that flash of recognition – That is me!”

Citing the example of an Iranian librarian in Sweden who is able to ensure that children of Iranian background can access books attuned to their experience and outlook, Patsy concluded by saying that librarians are the people who can be relied on to bring books to children. Librarians can insist on quality – for without quality it is hard to foster a love of reading and provide the key to the mirror/window.

I think there’s plenty to chew on there and I will post about the second speaker in Part2!

One of the intriguing aspects of walking around the Bologna Book Fair was perusing the array of books in so many different languages and wondering which ones would be the ones to be chosen for translation for editions in other countries… and why.

It was fun to see books we have featured on PaperTigers - like The Magic Horse of Han Gan in Italian -

but there were also lots of beautiful books that caught the eye, and which unfortunately I cannot yet begin to read. I thought for my Books at Bedtime post this week I would just share a few of these images with you, starting with one that immediately struck me as being perfect for a bedtime story:

The little girl (more…)

Among the hundreds of publishers from all over the world at the Bologna Book Fair was Kasmir Promet from Croatia. Aline and I were immediately attracted to their booth by the amazing book-sculpture furniture at the front. We liked the posters on display too and bought some postcards. I’m so glad we did as it was only at that point we realised that the artist Andrea Petrlik Huseinović was there and that one beautiful set of her artwork, all in shades of blue, black and white, was from a book which is available in English: and it really is something special.

The Blue Sky is about a little 10-year-old girl who has lost her parents. There is nobody in the world to love her so she shuts herself away in the high tower she builds around herself and looks towards the sky in search of her mother. First the birds become her friends and then, as she remembers happy times with her mother, she starts to make friends with the different sky creatures her memories conjure up. Finally, a blackbird appears. The bird, which had been rescued as a fledgling by the girl and her mother, has come to reunite them. “Nobody has ever seen her again. The birds that fly in the blue sky say that she is somewhere in the clouds, together with her mother”.

This heart-breaking story has a fairy-tale quality which means that children will find it sad, yes, but not unbearable. The fact that the girl is reunited with her mother (and it is a fact, as far as my children are concerned, for example) means that the outcome is positive. However, this is also a cautionary tale with a stern message made clear from the outset: “Had someone hugged her with care and love, had she only experienced a little warmth, the story would have been different”.

Andrea Petrlik Huseinovic has won many awards for her work, both at home in Croatia and internationally. Her illustrations for Pinocchio earned her a place on the IBBY Honour List in 2002; and in 2003 she was awarded a Biennial of Illustration Bratislava (BIB) Plaque for her illustrations for The Blue Sky and Alice in Wonderland. The original paintings for both these books were bought by the Chihiro Art Museum in Japan for its International Collection. Appropriately enough, the idea for The Blue Sky came to Andrea during a UNESCO-BIB art workshop in Bratislava in 2001. In an afterword she talks about her own background, including “the saddest thing in my life”: she lost both her parents when she was ten years old. This knowledge, of course, adds poignancy to the story but it is clear that it is not meant to be taken as autobiographical. It remains an allegory for what happens when children are alone and we do not stretch out our hands and hearts to them. It’s an extraordinary book that works on many levels, for children and adults. It’s the kind of book that needs to be read together, whether as a family or as a school group; and it offers scope for enriching and soul-searching discussion. I bought two copies: one for my boys and one for their school library.

You can read it for yourselves straight away here as it is in the International Children’s Digital Library. If it proves hard sourcing a personal copy, it can be ordered directly from the publisher…

An event on the first morning of the Bologna Book Fair set the tone for Aline’s and my enjoyment of the whole experience, when we heard British poet Michael Rosen and Argentine-Mexican poet Jorge Luján taking part in a packed-out seminar about “Poetry in Children’s Books”.

Michael Rosen started his presentation with an interactive recitation of his poem “This is the Hand” (here’s a link to it but “slip” in the 3rd stanza should read “slid”!), and then went on to talk about how he became a poet, almost despite the way poetry had been taught in schools when he was a boy (1950’s England: “we like poems where nothing happens and people are a little bit sad and don’t know why”!)…

As well as being a very entertaining speaker, who also charmed his audience with a poem he had written the day before about his day in Bologna, he had some very salient points to make about why it is so important to include poetry in the school curriculum. He compared reading a poem to looking at a photograph in an album: it freezes time for a moment and “you can put it up in front of you and can look at it again and again”. He pointed out that this kind of contemplation and reflection are very important for children and that in education there are not many opportunities to do this without having an answer to all the questions. Poetry provides a different way of investigating reality – through suggestion or illustration perhaps – which reverberates in people’s minds and opens the way to a different sort of dialogue. “Stories usually have to conclude; poems can end with a question.”

Jorge Luján began (more…)

Ah, Bologna!

Aline and I have much to tell about our fantastic trip to the Bologna Children’s Book Fair at the beginning of this month. There really is no better event to take the pulse of the children’s book publishing world: and what a world that is!

We’ve met so many interesting people and enjoyed putting faces to names of organisations and publishers; we’ve attended inspiring presentations; and have been dazzled by the quality and endlessly varied styles of the illustrations we’ve come across, both in the books we have browsed through and as part of the fair’s special exhibits. The overall impression was of immense industry – people in deep discussion, buying and selling rights; looking through artists’ portfolios; rushing between presentations – what a buzz!

Over the next few weeks, Aline and I will be posting on a variety of topics. In the meantime, here are some of the highlights for us, in no particular order:

Looking at the proofs for Ed Young’s new book, Wabi Sabi (written by Mark Reibstein);
Meeting librarians from all over the world at a session organised by the IFLA (International Federation of Libraries Associations and Institutions) – so lively that we were asked to be quiet…! – and hearing IBBY President and Canadian Groundwood Books publisher, Patricia Aldana’s presentation entitled “Books as Mirrors”;
Attending the launch of the International Youth Library’s White Ravens 2008 catalog;
Listening to poets Michael Rosen (UK Children’s Laureate) and Jorge Lujan’s contributions to a panel titled “Poetry Break: Poetry in Children’s Books”;
Attending the award-presentation of the Bologna Raggazzi “New Horizons” Award to Chennai-based Tara Publishing, for the hand-made book The Nightlife of Trees, and watching how the book came into being;
Hearing illustrators Robert Ingpen and Paul O. Zelinsky talk about their contributions to the book Artist to Artist: 23 Major Illustrators Talk to Children About Their Art (the proceeds of which go to the Eric Carl Museum of Picture Book Art.)…

Well, I could just keep going – and I will. And so will Aline: so keep coming back as the full picture unfolds…

It’s not a threat. It’s a promise.

So how was your weekend? Good? That’s fantastic. What? How was mine, you ask? Oh, it was pretty good. I didn’t do much. Slept, sat, ate… met Mo Willems. It’s true. This picture is proof. Mo is on the left. I am behind the guy with the fat head on the right. Mo was kind enough to let my wife, kiddo, and me hang out with him for a little while during a rare break in his busy schedule. It was fantastic! If you’re a fan of Mo too, maybe you’d like this interview that I did with him a while back.
Thanks Mo!

If you’re a bug, I want to take your picture.