Bologna Children’s Book Fair Grows, Highlights Asian Presence

Bologna Children’s Book Fair 2025 sees record growth and rising Asian presence, with India shining in awards, art, and publishing collaborations.

on Apr 09, 2025

Bologna Children’s Book Fair Grows, Highlights Asian Presence

Each day, I write the book. -Elvis Costello

Three weeks on from the London Book Fair, Bologna's international Children's Book Fair in its 62nd year attracted 1,577 exhibitors and 33,318 trade visitors, highlighting a stunning year-on-year increase of between 5 and 10% for the last four years.

From Asia, South Korea had the biggest contingent for the second time, comprising 52 exhibition stands of its publishers and one stand of its national association of printers. 48 stands were occupied by Chinese companies, including Hong Kong, of which some 13 printing houses were present. The remaining exhibitors included 24 Indians, 16 Taiwanese, 14 Japanese, and a total of 20 Filipinos, Malaysians,Singaporeans, Indonesians, Vietnamese, Pakistanis and, for the first time ever, Sri Lankans and Thais. The Indian participants were from 18 publishers, 3 printers (Thomson, Nutech, and CDC) and 3 organizations (NBT, Chennai Book Fair, and the Ministry of Higher Education).

During the fair, BCBF and Malaysian Book Publishers Association (MaBoPa) revealed a collaboration for the IPA's International Publishers Congress to be staged in June next year in Kuala Lumpur. Having joined in 2024 as ambassador member of the Geneva-based International Publishers Association IPA (the largest worldwide federation of national, regional, and specialized publishers' associations), BCBF partnered with IPA, MaBoPa, and Publishers Without Borders to sign a memorandum of understanding heralding MaBoPa's Mingzhou Zhou as the first ambassador of the 2026 congress.

The highlight of this year's BCBF was the first European showing of the PublishHer Lounge, which debuted last year at the Sharjah International Book Fair. The PublishHer Lounge, which aims to be a learning and debating unit for women in publishing, provided an extensive program aimed at developing leadership, entrepreneurship and professional skills among women employed in the publishing sector.

Bologna Ragazzi Sustainability Award to New Delhi's Artist

The Bologna Ragazzi Award for this year in the Sustainability category was received by New Delhi-based Art1st for the book Art is a Voice by artist Kripa. The jury discovered that the book Tackled Voice by artist Kripa. The jury held that the book was dealing with issues of social and environmental justice, empowerment and citizenship, which allowed and invited the reader to utilize their art and voice to express their own individual views about the world in which they existed. "A dynamic, striking and richly pictorial multimedia and interactive publication of various visual languages."BCBF's most charming strength is its exhibition of illustrators, displaying up to 1,000 drawings, posters and photographs annually. A virtual version of the exhibition, the Illustrators Wall, is available and may be consulted during six months following each BCBF. This year, paintings by six Indian artists are to be seen there till the end of September 2025 - Aparna Ananthuni, Ishita Jain, Aayesha Ejaz, Aparna Maladkar, Roy Samriddha and Sindu Gastaldi.

BCBF next year will run from 13 to 16 April 13 2026.

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