At the 2024 edition of Bologna Children’s Book Fair, the trade show’s 62nd iteration. Image: BCBF
By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson
Five International Stops for the Tour
For a fourth year, the world’s largest trade show based in young people’s literature, Elena Pasoli‘s Bologna Children’s Book Fair, will be traveling an exhibition to various brother trade shows in international markets, before it goes “home” to the Emilia-Romagna for the 63rd iteration of Bologna, running March 31 to April 3.
Jacks Thomas‘ Bologna Book Plus, the generalist publishing suite now firmly attached to Bologna’s youth-specific program, is also involved in the tour again this year.
The general conception of the roadshow seems to be expanding a bit in its purpose and display—not just a display of fine children’s book artwork from Bologna’s enormous round of competitions but also an evocation of the dual-fairs’ evolving programming characters.
Organizers today (September 12), in presenting the new tour, point to such relatively recent additions to this huge fair as the Comics Corner and a smartly conceived television and film rights center, both understood as “business areas developed in the wake of the increasingly rapid growth of the comics sector and of the sale of audiovisual rights.” There’s a nearby contest that’s been added to the roster, too, the Bologna Ragazzi Cross Media Award, designed to recognize “projects that intersect publishing content and other media.”
In July, our readers were updated on the coming of a new Games Business Center concept, to be mounted both at Frankfurter Buchmesse (October 16 to 20) and at Bologna at the end of March. In addition, the tour is expected to tout the Bologna Licensing Trade Fair/Kids program.
It’s on such initiatives that this year’s tour is said to be focused as it’s prepared to open in connection with the Cartoon Forum in Toulouse and the famous Festival de la Bande Dessinée d’Angoulême.
Key Dates for the Tour
Appearances of this touring showcase of Bologna’s 2025 offerings are to be made in:
- Toulouse, where the Cartoon Forum is opening on Monday (September 16) to run to the 19th
- Frankfurt is the second port of call for the tour, when the Bologna roadshow will join elements of Guest of Honor Italy‘s program
- China Shanghai International Children’s Book Fair is next, running November 15 to 17 (co-produced by BolognaFiere and this year observing the 700th anniversary of Marco Polo’s death)
- Guadalajara International Book Fair follows (November 30 to December 8) — overlapping this year in Mexico with the 38th International Publishers Congress from the International Publishers Association (IPA) at Guadalajara, a program presented by Mexico’s CANIEM and the Association of American Publishers.
- Angoulême, which runs January 29 to February 2
The Bologna tour is organized with the support of ITA, the Italian Trade Agency, and the Italian ministry of foreign affairs and international cooperation.
With an opening count of 1,523 exhibitors, Bologna Children’s Book Fair and Bologna Book Plus drew 31,735 trade visitors in its 2024 iteration, a fine jump of some 10 percent above the trade show’s statistics of 2023 (which drew 28, 894).
New markets added to the Bologna array this year included Angola, Belarus, Benin, Bolivia, Cameroon, Colombia, Luxembourg, Mauritius, Monaco, Moldova, Paraguay, the Philippines, Togo, and Uganda.
More on Bologna Children’s Book Fair is here, more from us on children’s books is here, more on publishing and book awards is here, and more on world publishing’s trade shows and book fairs is here.