Every day, I write the book. – Elvis Costello
Three weeks after the London Book Fair, Bologna’s international Children’s Book Fair in its 62nd year brought together 1,577 exhibitors and 33,318 trade visitors, pointing to a remarkable year-on- year growth between 5 and 10% over the past four years.
From Asia, the largest delegation came once again from South Korea, with 52 exhibition booths representing its publishers and one booth of its national printers association. 48 booths were taken by companies from China, including Hong Kong, among whom some 13 printing houses. The other exhibitors were 24 from India, 16 from Taiwan, 14 from Japan, and a total of 20 from the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, Pakistan and, for the first time, Sri Lanka and Thailand. The Indian exhibitors represented 18 publishers, 3 printers (Thomson, Nutech, and CDC) and 3 organizations (NBT, Chennai Book Fair, and the Ministry of Higher Education).
At the fair, BCBF and the Malaysian Book Publishers Association (MaBoPa) announced a partnership for the IPA’s International Publishers Congress to be held in June next year in Kuala Lumpur. Having become a patron member in 2024 of the Geneva-based International Publishers Association IPA (the world’s largest federation of national, regional, and specialised publishers’ associations), BCBF joined with IPA, MaBoPa and Publishers Without Borders to sign a memorandum of understanding announcing MaBoPa’s Mingzhou Zhou as the 2026 congress’ first ambassador.
A highlight at this year’s BCBF was the inaugural European appearance of the PublishHer Lounge, first introduced at the Sharjah International Book Fair last year. The PublishHer Lounge, meant to be a teaching and discussion unit for women in publishing, offered a comprehensive program designed to foster leadership, entrepreneurship and professional development among women working in the publishing industry.
Bologna Ragazzi Sustainability Award to New Delhi’s Art1st
This year’s Bologna Ragazzi Award in the Sustainability category went to Art1st based in New Delhi for the book Art is a Voice by artist Kripa. The jury found that the book addressed themes around social and environmental justice, empowerment and citizenship, enabling and inviting the reader to use their art and voice to articulate their personal perspectives on the world in which they live. “A striking, dynamic and pictorially rich multimedia and interactive publication of diverse visual languages.”
One of BCBF’s most attractive strong points is its illustrators exhibition, showing up to 1,000 drawings, posters and photographs every year. The exhibition has an online version, the Illustrators Wall, which can be consulted during six months after each BCBF. This year, works by six artists from India can be admired there until the end of September, 2025 – Aparna Ananthuni, Ishita Jain, Aayesha Ejaz, Aparna Maladkar, Roy Samriddha and Sindu Gastaldi.
Next year’s BCBF will take place from 13 to 16 April 13 2026.
