【Guest of Honor - ITALY】Exhibition: IBBY Italia Choice
IBBY Italia
The individuals and organizations that adhere to IBBY believe that access to stories and good books for children contributes to harmonious growth and the development of the ability to view the world with a broad, critical, and welcoming perspective. For this reason, the work of IBBY in general and IBBY Italy specifically aims to create the conditions that allow every girl and boy to access good books. The selection of high-quality Italian books is precisely in this spirit; it seeks to be a tool for all those adults who, in any capacity, are engaged in promoting reading as a democratic process. For this third edition, a group of professionals has been involved in the selection process, reading, evaluating, and assessing the publishing output of 2023 and the first six months of 2024. In this effort to promote Italian children’s publishing, IBBY Italy is supported by AIE (Italian Publishers Association) and the Bologna Children’s Book Fair, which continue to endorse this publication and facilitate the circulation of the bibliographic exhibition at various international publishing fairs.
Franco Fornaroli
IBBY Italia President
IBBY Italia Choice
Back in in 2021, an intensive team effort led by Paola Vassalli generated the first edition of our Honour List. A wide-ranging group of professionals - booksellers, librarians, translators, and scholars of children’s literature – joined forces to select the finest Italian titles. The resulting list paid homage to a specific editorial strategy in Italy of hiring skilled graphic designers, meticulous editors, and superior printers up and down the country.
Now in its third iteration, this biennial exhibition of excellence is gearing up again. Thanks to a fruitful partnership with the Bologna Children’s Book Fair, past lists have toured prestigious venues in Italy and internationally, from the Turin Book Fair to Più libri più liberi in Rome, as well as book fairs in Frankfurt, Sharjah, Guadalajara and the Salon du Livre et de la Presse Jeunesse in Montreuil, just outside Paris. All of these venues have provided numerous opportunities for rich dialogue and exchange.
With the passing years, our scope has broadened to include new categories such as Toddler books for the very young. This year, 2024, is an annus mirabilis because Italy is the guest country at the Frankfurter Buchmesse. The invitation warranted a curated selection of Italian children’s books, and a debut for a brand new category: Books on Books, showcasing essays and high quality non-fiction books that, along with catalogues, shape promotional efforts in Italy. Books on Books was conceived to appeal - to publishers and industry professionals in Italy and internationally who promote, disseminate, enhance and study children’s literature, comics, poetry, picture books, fiction and nonfiction, as well as books for toddlers.
Two thousand and twenty-four is particularly special because, back in Italy after two previous sojourns (Florence in 1958, Bologna in 1970), this year the IBBY World Congress meets in Trieste.
The congress's call to action – “Join the Revolution. Giving every child good books” – is an invitation to work together to foster a story-, image-, beauty- and imagination-led revolution. That adjective, good, succinctly expresses the guiding criterion behind the list selection process for books. We are proud to promote fine Italian books at every fair around the globe, as well as at every library, bookstore and school.