Saturday 11 April 2015

Bologna Children's Book Fair 2015

I attended the Bologna Children's Book Fair for the third time last week. The first few days seemed busier than ever. The first day of the fair,  I carried my A4 portfolio and four dummy books by hand, which made it even more challenging and stressful. I later decided to carry them around in a small luggage, in case I have to show them to someone. The latter never happened, but I gave a few postcards to some publishers. 

I am happy that I participated in the Cambridge School of Art stand again, but this time with all the books, which I created during the MA Children's Book Illustration course. I had to hand in 9 copies in total, plus an A3 portfolio and promotional materials, which can be seen in a photo below. A couple of books were printed with Blurb, but still there was plenty of work to do in preparation for the stand, although it must have been easier having already gone through this last year. 




Illustrators wall half an hour after the fair opened and half an hour later:



Exhibition of all the past BolognaRagazzi award winners.
This year's winners can be found here.





International bookstore with a nice Alice in Wonderland exhibition:







Playful stands in Hall 30:




Conference with our course leader prof. Salisbury and three recent graduates, Julia Woolf, Shu-Ti Liao and David Barrow, about their illustrating techniques:



A few illustrators from Croatia - the Guest of Honour exhibition:

MARIJANA JELIĆ - Dragica the Witch, 2013

TOMISLAV TOMIĆ - Trick of the Tale written by Caitlin and John Matthews, 2008

DANIJEL ŽEŽELJ - Red Hood Redux, unpublished, 2014

TOMISLAV ZLATIĆ - Lina in the Hat written by Josipa Dragičević, 2014


One of the Silent Book contest winners - Cristina Bazzoni from Italy:



Exhibition by Catarina Sobral - the winner of the International Award for Illustration 2014



Bologna Illustrators Exhibition

Two amazing illustrators from our course were awarded for their immense talents this year. Maisie Shearring won the International Award for Illustration, while Katie Harnett received the Grant Award to study in Italy. Well done, girls!

KATIE HARNETT - Great Britain (Fiction)
ÁLVAREZ HERNÁNDEZ DAVID DANIEL - Mexico (Fiction)
SCHAFFER LENA KATHINKA - Chile (Non-fiction)
MO YEJIN - Republic of Korea (Fiction)
YOON JOOHEE - USA (Fiction); YOO JUNJAE - Republic of Korea (Fiction)
PEDDE NADINE - Germany (Fiction)
GUROWSKA MALGORZATA - Poland (Non-fiction)
LIU HSU KUNG - Taiwan (Fiction)
SERRA ADOLFO - Spain (Fiction)
Me by the Cambridge School of Art Stand (with "Morning Monster" behind me) on the last day of the fair:



Now I am patiently waiting for my feedback from the meetings, which took place in the stand during the fair. It was probably the most busy and crowded place in the fair, at least from what I saw. There was a total of 82 recent and past graduates as well as some new students who exhibited their work. You can find all the participants here. See you next time!