In the Rights Center at the 11th Shanghai International Children’s Book Fair on its opening day, November 15. Image: Publishing Perspectives, Porter Anderson
By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson
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Amid reunions with industry colleagues and exhibition-floor aisles busy crowded with fairgoers, the 2024 Shanghai International Children’s Book Fair (CCBF) opened today here in China, in the sixth year of its collaborative relationship with Italy’s Bologna Children’s Book Fair and Bologna Book Plus.
That small-world sensation of finding friends and business acquaintances at one of the industry’s younger international book fairs was cinched with the biggest surprise of the day in a “master class” panel discussion on graphic fiction moderated by Jacks Thomas, the session’s moderator and director of Bologna Book Plus.
Thomas mentioned author Samantha Harvey’s win on Tuesday (November 12) of the Booker Prize for Fiction for her short novel Orbital (Penguin Random House/Jonathan Cape).
As it turned out, a panel member—the literary agent Jackie Huang, chief Beijing office representative for Andrew Nurnberg Associates International—is handling Harvey’s work not only in mainland China but also in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and in other key Asian markets, something that even Thomas hadn’t known when she mentioned the fast-selling Orbital.
That particular contrast is a hallmark of this fair which, for many of its world-publishing professional attendees, is a far-flung event still developing its own personality and character as its visitors’ and exhibitors’ numbers rise.
Literary agent Jackie Huang, on the right, joins a panel discussion on graphic novels with, from left, Ian McMullen, director of the United Kingdom’s Book Life Publishing; moderator Jacks Tomas, the Bologna Book Plus director; and Yuan Nan, vice-president of China’s Phoenix Publishing. Image: Publishing Perspectives, Porter Anderson
The Long Trip: Marco Polo as a Compass for the Show
In its 11th year, the Shanghai fair, directed by Donna Chai, is a draw for such familiar faces as BIEF’s Nicholas Roche from France.
Here, too, is Montreal-based publisher Simon de Jocas at Les 400 coups on the double-wide collective stand from Publishers Without Borders.
Rashid Al Kous, the Emirates Publishers Association (EPA) executive director who was a key player in Sharjah’s new Onshur incubator and its first class of graduates, is at his and his team’s stand just across the aisle from the Bologna Children’s Book Fair Marco Polo exhibition—even as the Sharjah International Book Fair continues its own run in the United Arab Emirates this weekend.
A major installation is nearby from South Korea, which presented seven K-comics companies at Frankfurter Buchmesse just last month.
A broadcast in progress from the exhibition floor of the China Shanghai International Children’s Book Fair. Image: Publishing Perspectives, Porter Anderson
While the one-on-one meetings, trading talks, and explorations of new writings and illustration will continue, so will content about some of the oldest literature from the “bridge” between Italy and China, as well.
At 10 a.m. on Saturday (November 16), while the one-on-one meetings, rights-trading sessions, and consumer traffic at this public-facing book fair has been led off with the historian, novelist, and essayist Alessandro Barbero in a special conference seminar.
Staged in cooperation the Italian Cultural Institute of Shanghai, Marco Polo’s Description of the World and its Readers: A Travel Account Mistaken for a Fantasy Book at 10 a.m. is a lecture occasioned by the 700th anniversary of Polo’s death.
Barbero’s lecture is on the Polo travelogue and its influence, and is accompanied by a display of books themed on Marco’s life and the legendry around him. A Champagne reception follows the Barbera lecture, with associates and some of the children who are not only fascinated by the Marco Polo story but also consistently well-behaved at the reception.
At the Marco Polo exhibition that accompanies Saturday’s (November 16) conference presentation with Alessandro Barbero’s lecture at China Shanghai International Children’s Book Fair. Image: Publishing Perspectives, Porter Anderson
The Barbero presentation was moderated by Italy’s Ivan Canu, an illustrator, designer, and designer with Mimaster Illustrazione of Milan.
Bologna Children’s Book Fair director Elena Pasoli opened session with Francesco D’Arelli, who directs the Italian Cultural Institute in Shanghai
While Shanghai has remained mostly shrouded in a dense fog, steamy mists, and low-hanging cloudes throughout this warm-weather week, the brightness of the lights and colors of the book fair inside the Shanghai World Expo Exhibition & Convention Center seemed on Friday to promise a strong turnout of local fair-going consumers this weekend.
An endless stream of taxis and other cars drops off and picks up attendees out front, security checks hum with polite searches, umbrellas are furled as fairgoers step in and head first for a Bologna exhibition on wardrobe design’s relations to literary expression.
A very young reader and her mother are fascinated with a vendor’s display of stuffed duckies at the China Shanghai International Children’s Book Fair on November 15, the event’s opening day. Image: Publishing Perspectives, Porter Anderson
More from Publishing Perspectives on the China Shanghai International Children’s Book Fair is here. More from us on China’s market is here, our closely followed China Bestsellers series produced in association with Beijing OpenBook is here, and more on children’s books is here.
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