Bologna Children's Book Fair 2025 1/4

Pictures

Dear Reader,

there is so much to tell you about my trip to the Bologna Children’s Book Fair 2025 that I’m going to break it down into four posts: Pictures, People, Place, Presentation. Today I bring you Pictures; lots of photos of things that I found beautiful and/or inspiring at the fair. I’m not going to write much because just choosing, editing and referencing the photos has already taken me AAAGES! I think it’s really important to try and properly reference/attribute work that I show here and give a link to the creator’s website if I can find one.

There is so much to see at the fair and so little time, I let myself just look at whatever catches my attention and accept that I will miss many wonderful things. One can’t have everything. I seem to like textile work, collage, high contrast (especially texture against plain backgrounds), rich colour palettes, limited colour palettes, strong compositions, attention to detail. So this is stuff I was drawn to and where I saw it, I hope you like some of it too.

The Illustrators Exhibition

Textile illustration ‘My Blue’ by Limi Xiao

Illustrations by Andrea Espier and Anne Crahay

Illustrations ‘Tres Tigres Tristes’ by Andrea Espier and ‘Mon Oiseau’ by Anne Crahay

‘La Nave de los Necios’ by Ana G. Lartitegui

Pictures from Talks

Picture book spread by 3D artist Heena Baek who gave a fascinating talk about her process. All the models and scenes are built for each spread with huge attention to detail, then meticulously photographed.

A practice painting by Sydney Smith for ‘I Talk Like a River’ by Jordan Scott. Sydney gave a wonderful talk about his work, his painting, how he harnesses his creativity to make picture books. He brought some original art which didn’t make it into his books; practice paintings which we were allowed to pass around!

Books from Publisher Stands

‘Capitombolo’ by Gek Tessaro published by Lapis Edizioni.

‘Largo, Pista, Tina in Vista’ by Manica K. Musil, this edition published by Beisler Editore.

I know, this isn’t really a book, but it’s a house from Sam and Julia’s Mouse Mansion series! You could look in all of the rooms and walk all the way round it. Everything handmade and little felt mice with tiny knitted clothes. Gorgeous!

The Illustrator’s Wall

There was loads of lovely work up on the wall again this year but I was always looking at it on the way out of the fair, at the end of the day, when my brain was tired, and I took NO PHOTOS of it! It was really sad that the new fabric wall covering didn’t hold tape well, so many people’s work just fell off the wall onto the floor where it sometimes got trampled. Awful to see all of that work fallen down.

Books from Country/group stands

‘Mala’ tactile textile book by Solene Négrerie and published by ‘Les Doigts Qui Rêvent’. ‘Aunti Knit, I Wear’ tactile book by Sevda Azadi Nomin who made only two copies herself! Both books are part of collections held in Toronto and the IBBY Canada chapter, who very kindly got them out especially to show me (we were talking about my interest in textile illustration).

Collage Illustrations, designed by Johanka Porazilova with UPRUM, decorating the Czech Republic stand.

Book proposal ‘Mango’ by Lucia Xin on the stand for Cambridge School of Art Master in Children’s Book Illustration, and an illustration by Shannon McNeill from her winning portfolio on the Society for Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators stand.

Thanks for following me this far, that’s all for now and I’ll see you next Wednesday.

Hannah xx

P.S.

My exhibition is finally down and finished, that has been most of my work for the past two months! If you missed it, I now have a video tour of my exhibition free to view up on Youtube, you can view it here.

Many thanks to Michael Munnik for allowing me to use his beautiful music in the background of my tour video and also alongside my time-lapse video here, go and listen to his songs on Bandcamp here.