Despite a rainy forecast and the overwhelming gloom of international politics, the attendees of this year’s Bologna Children’s Book Fair are focused on weathering challenges as a community. At the opening ceremony on Monday, the mayor of Bologna, Matteo Lepore, called the fair one of the city’s most important events. Referring to the ongoing wars and other conflicts around the globe, he said, “In a moment of international tension, where words are important, the fair is dedicated to children, the future, and human rights. The right path for the future is community.” He told attendees, “Bologna is a city of literature and imagination. Welcome to our city of peace and solidarity.” Indeed, a common refrain among the publishers PW spoke with at the event was that “children’s book people are the best people,” whose shared sense of hope and humor make it a joy to come together.

Jennifer Gonzalez, senior VP and publisher of children’s books at Sourcebooks, described the atmosphere as “upbeat, with new people and stands I’ve never seen before.” Addressing the decline in reading among tweens, Gonzalez and her colleagues Justin Krasner, editorial director at Sourcebooks eXplore, and Jenne Abramowitz, editorial director of the Sourcebooks Fire, Young Readers, and Jabberwocky imprints, said they’re investing strategically in “hooky” middle grade in a variety of high-interest formats, including illustrated books, memoir, and novels in verse. They were interested to hear about new formats, including a choose-your-path graphic novel, during their conversation with agents at the fair—the second they’ve attended. Abramowitz said she feels that “so many editors publish what they want kids to want, instead of what they actually want.”

Helen Thewlis, sales and marketing director at What on Earth?, is likewise doubling down on highly illustrated books with shorter page counts and interactive formats, including new additions in the publishers’ Factopia series by U.S. author Kate Olesin and U.K. illustrator Andy Smith. She said that feedback for the series, which has eight titles out and more on the way, has been strong. “We’re hearing that reluctant readers find it easy to dip in and out of, because they can follow their interests” rather than reading it in a linear fashion. Thewlis also noted an appetite for “cute and cozy” books.

Comics and graphic novels remain a booming category even in light of the global decline in reading rates. Publishers from Norway and Poland, the fair’s current and incumbent guest-of-honor countries, told the BCBF audience on Monday that the graphic novel market has matured significantly over the past two decades, driven in large part by a dramatic shift in who is making comics. Speaking on a panel titled “Graphic Novels for Adults: The Synergy Between Words, Design, and Illustration,” Håkon Strand of Norway’s Strand Forlag and Szymon Holcman of Poland’s Timof Comics noted that entrants to a national Norwegian comics competition went from 95% male in 1997 to 52% female last year, a change Strand said has reshaped readership as well. Holcman described a parallel shift in Poland, a market that barely existed under communism and now publishes nearly 2,000 comics titles annually, with a creator and reader base that has moved to a roughly equal gender split.

Both publishers identified manga as the dominant force in their markets—Japanese is now the second most translated language in Poland, with around 800 new titles per year—but said that literary graphic novels occupy a distinct space that continues to grow. Norway’s national library system, which purchases 1,000 to 2,000 copies of most graphic novels on publication, was cited as a key driver of that country’s development and a potential model for others. The two publishers acknowledged a structural tension between the slow production cycle of literary graphic novels, often two or more years per title, and the appetite of readers who can consume a catalog in weeks.

On artificial intelligence, Holcman was the more outspoken of the two, saying that AI has already cost illustrators and animators jobs in Poland and describing the technology as something the industry should actively resist. “Art is the meeting between people, a discussion, a conversation,” he said. “We don’t need machines for that.” Both publishers said the craft of comics storytelling, specifically, the ability to control a reader’s eye across a page, remains a distinctive and difficult skill that no tool can substitute for, and one that publishers are still learning to identify and cultivate in new talent.

During a masterclass at the Illustrators Survival Corner on Wednesday afternoon, a panel titled “Agents, Matchmaking, and the Human Pulse of Agenting” featured literary agents Kirsten Hall, founder and president of Catbird Agency, and Erica Rand Silverman, VP at Stimola Literary Studio; Susan Rich, editor-at-large at Little, Brown Books for Young Readers; illustrator Felicita Sala; and author Matthew Burgess. The group discussed the importance of human connections in the creation of books, emphasizing that it’s in these connections the “alchemy and magic” of books blossoms. They stressed that while forming friendships with kindred spirits and following your instincts may seem counterintuitive in our data-driven world, it’s as important now as ever.

In the words of Molly Ker Hawn, a director at London-based literary agency David Higham Associates, “Art is not broken. It doesn’t need to be fixed by a machine.”

New Directions and Discoveries

The fair has always been about a fertile ground for identifying and cultivating creative and business partnerships. Staf Nys, acquiring editor at Belgian children’s publisher Clavis Uitgeverij, is attending Bologna for the second time this year. The bulk of his day on Monday comprised of meetings with aspiring illustrators, with Tuesday reserved for buying and selling. “We always try to stimulate new illustrators and we’re excited to start a journey with them,” he said, citing Clavis’s Key Colours Competition, which is open every other year to international creators of unpublished picture books with promise. As a further example of the value of the fair in forging new creative collaborations, Nys shared that his business card features artwork from Spanish artist Isa Pirracas, an illustrator whom he met and signed at the 2025 edition of BCBF. Her book Samen naar de markt in de lente (Off to the Spring Market!), inspired by their conversation about her love of flea markets, was recently released by Clavis in Dutch. He said there’s been a lot of interest during the fair, particularly from Western and Southern Europe.

Berlin-based Marc Majewski is attending the fair again as an author-illustrator and also in his capacity as art director at Post Wave Children’s Books, which expanded into the U.S. market in 2024. Coming from meetings with Korean publishers on Monday, he told PW, “I love the sensibility, playfulness, and humor that I find in Korean books.” He’s also a fan of the “poetic and non-linear approach” of many Swedish picture books, in which not everything is always understandable. “I think that’s something children can relate to. I’ve been thinking a lot about narrative structure, and I want to bring more of that almost illogical, childlike freedom into my own stories.” Majewski was on his way to hold a portfolio review in the Illustrators Survival Corner, a service he’s offered in previous years and which he said has yielded connections with promising talent.

Lawrence Schimel—author, illustrator, and bidirectional English/Spanish translator—told PW that three of his appointments, representing Lebanon, the Philippines, and Indonesia, had to cancel their trip to Bologna because of the war. He said, “With the state of the world, it’s necessary to have something to look forward to. For me, that’s learning new language and exploring new cultures.” Schimel, who has 12 translations coming out this year, appeared on two Bologna panels.

At Clavis, Nys is particularly excited to be publishing prominent Japanese books that he acquired for Dutch translation after discovering them during a productive Bologna Fair in 2025. The first is Kiki’s Delivery Service by Hans Christian Andersen Award winner Eiko Kadono (acquired from Fukuinkan through The English Agency). He noted that the timing is particularly auspicious, as the sequel Kiki and the New Magic will be available in the first-ever English translation on August 25 from Random House Children’s Book imprint Delacorte Press and the new IMAX edition of the adaptation by Studio Ghibli.

One of the other major acquisitions from Bologna 2025 to come to fruition this year is Diana Wynne Jones’s fantasy trilogy, The Land of Ingary, which includes Howl’s Moving Castle, Castle in the Air, and House of Many Ways (sold by David Higham). The first book priginally published in 1986 in the U.K. and also was adapted by Studio Ghibli into an Academy Award-nominated animation film. Like Kiki, he noted, the books will be available in Dutch for the first time, four decades following the trilogy’s debut.

Milestones and New Beginnings

Awards are a cornerstone of the fair, and several prize announcements offered another opportunity for the children’s publishing community to gather around something positive. The prestigious Hans Christian Andersen Awards went to U.K. author Michael Rosen and Chinese illustrator Cai Gao, while the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award was given to Canadian author-illustrator Jon Klassen. The annual BOP – Bologna Prize for the Best Children’s Publishers of the Year were announced at a ceremony on Monday evening in Palazzo Re Enzo, which also featured the presentation of the BolognaRagazzi Awards and other prizes. The ceremony was followed by the traditional reception kicking off the fair.

Several publishers are celebrating milestones in the form of book anniversaries, with A.A. Milne and E.H. Shepard’s Winnie-the-Pooh and Carlo Collodi’s The Adventures of Pinocchio turning 100, The Little Prince turning 80, and Mo Willems’s Elephant & Piggie turning 20.

The next Bologna Children’s Book Fair will take place April 5–8, 2027. In the meantime, the international celebration of illustration will continue at the inaugural Zig Zag Festival in New York City on June 8–12 of this year. Billed as “a visual bridge between Italy and the U.S.,” the five-day series of events will bring together Italian and American illustrators and members of the publishing community for a chance to foster cross-cultural collaboration.

The project was announced at Bologna with a panel featuring some of the key participants: Elena Pasoli, director of BCBF; Livia Senic-Matuglia, manager of Rizzoli Bookstore; Francesca Rizzi, founder of Sullaluna bookstore and bistrot in Venice and New York City; Emilio Varra, founder of Hamelin Associazione Culturale in Bologna; Arabelle Liepold, executive director at the Society of Illustrators in New York City; and illustrators Steven Guarnaccia, Claudia Ruiz, and Felicita Sala.