Hedwige Pasquet, left, accepts a special Bologna Ragazzi Award at the 2025 Bologna Children’s Book Fair as the chair of Gallimard Jeunesse, the most-awarded publisher in the 60 years of the prize, with 24 awards — the earliest in 1979. Conferring the special award on Pasquet are Bologna director Elena Pasoli, center, and Bologna Book Plus guest director Jacks Thomas. Image: BCBF
By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson
Application Deadline: January 31
Although we have just moved past the spring trade show and book fair season in the international industry, a new cycle of preparations for 2026 is beginning.
Proof of that arrives with the news that applications for the Bologna Ragazzi Awards and the Bologna Ragazzi Crossmedia Award have opened for Elena Pasoli‘s Bologna Children’s Book Fair (set to run April 13 to 16) in association with Jacks Thomas‘ Bologna Book Plus.
In the Ragazzi Awards overall, the winners are annually among the publishing world’s most innovative and accomplished children’s picture books. They’re presented in five core categories:
- Fiction
- Nonfiction
- Opera Prima (debut works by authors and illustrators)
- Comics
- Toddler
Jurors may also assign a “New Horizons” award to an unusually innovative work. And in 2026, the special category (this changes annually) will be Fables and Fairy Tales. Participation is open to all publishers, including those who do not exhibit at Bologna Children’s Book Fair.
The United Arab Emirates’ Bodour Al Qasimi, left, a winner in the Bologna Ragazzi 2025 Fiction honors for ‘House of Wisdom,’ sits at the awards ceremony with Gvantsa Jobava, a publisher based in Tbilisi. Jobava is the current president of the International Publishers Association, a position Al Qasimi held in 2021 and 2022. Image: BCBF and Nabs Ahmedi
Highlights of the 2025 Ragazzi Awards
In this year’s award ceremony held on March 31, one of the most popular honors went to the Emirati publisher, author, businesswoman, and women’s advocate, the Sheikha Bodour Al Qasimi, the former president of the International Publishers Association (IPA). Al Qasimi became the first woman from an Arab Gulf state to win a Ragazzi Award, and the honor was based on her work, The House of Wisdom (Kalimat Group, 2024), illustrated by Majid Zakeri Younesi.
Many trade visitors to Al Qasimi’s home emirate Sharjah know of the modern House of Wisdom, opened there in 2020 as a key library and study hub powered by extensive contemporary information-retrieval systems. The name, however, originates with the Grand Library of Baghdad—also called the House of Wisdom—which served as a major intellectual center until its destruction in 1258 during the Mongol siege of Baghdad.
In accepting the award, Al Qasimi said, “For me, this award signals a shift toward a more inclusive children’s publishing sector. Amid heightened global tensions, stories like House of Wisdom carry a message that books can occasion unity, progress, and a deeper understanding between cultures. It’s a timely statement about literature’s power to build bridges and keep the bigger human picture in view.
“The House of Wisdom was a library that symbolized how knowledge and collaboration across cultures can build sturdy bridges. Its loss in 1258 is a tragic allegory for the fragility of intellectual freedom—a lesson of undiminished relevance today.”
Before receiving the award, Al Qasimi signed copies of her book at the Giannino Stoppani Children’s Bookshop, which she helped restore after it was destroyed by fire in 2022. To support the renovation, she allocated significant funds from the Sharjah World Book Capital Office.
The award ceremony chamber at Palazzo d’Accursio, readied for the 2025 Bologna Ragazzi Awards. Image: BCBF
Another impressive moment in the ceremony at the Farnese Chapel of the Palazzo d’Accursio arrived when Hedwige Pasquet, chair of Paris’ Gallimard Jeunesse, received a special award in recognition of being the house with more awards than any other over the years of the Ragazzi program. The company’s 24 awards date back to the first in 1979.
Related article: Translation-Exchange Partnerships: Leading Publishers Share Their Experiences. Image: FBM, Bernd Hartung
In accepting this special honor, Pasquet spoke of “values we share with the Bologna Children’s Book Fair, offering children the very best books and promoting cultural exchange.”
Pasquet joined us in a Publishing Perspectives panel at Frankfurter Buchmesse on rights partnerships in 2017, saying that in such arrangements, it’s important that the two houses are both in children’s publishing and equally concerned for the responsibilities that carries.
“We’re very concerned about the cultural exchange,” she said, “about the links we can create between countries in the Arabic world. And if we don’t get this to the children now, to know and discover, it’s not going to happen later”—it will be too late.
Information on the Bologna Ragazzi Awards and application is here.
The Bologna Ragazzi Crossmedia Award 2026
Messaging from Bologna’s organizers also points to the Bologna Ragazzi Crossmedia award, which has to do with content development from page to screen, or in the opposite direction. There are two core categories in this one, Crossmedia projects and Digital Reading Experiences. There’s also a special category being added this year on Gender Equality and Environmental Sustainability.
Information on this set of awards is here.
More on Bologna Children’s Book Fair is here, more on children’s books is here, more on the Italian market is here, more on the world industry’s vast field of book and publishing awards is here, and more on world publishing’s trade shows and book fairs is here.