Marjorie and I weren’t quite part of the willing and dealing that is normally associated with the Bologna Book Fair (unlike Blue Rose Girls‘ Alvina Ling, Little, Brown publisher extraordinaire. See her photo of the fair’s agent center, with all the rows of numbered tables). We weren’t there to to buy or sell rights, but to take it all in: we renewed old contacts and made new ones, we lined up interviews for the website and, most of all, we spread the word on PaperTigers. We spent the bulk of our time on three main halls, where most of the publishers of multicultural books were – and that was by no means a small feat – but we did have time for a few blood orange juice-breaks, and to attend authors’ presentations, gatherings at the Illustrators’ Café and an award ceremony or two. All very much worthwhile.
One of these inspiring, ‘off the beaten book aisles’ moments was the Bologna Ragazzi Award ceremony, which took place at the end of our first day – a day which had begun with the poetry panel Marjorie recently wrote about. The fair this year had a special section dedicated to poetry and a poetry category “to encourage the publication of poetry for children throughout the word” was especially added to its prestigious set of awards. Judged by an international jury, the winner of the poetry prize was the Polish publisher Wytwórnia, for “Tuwim: Poems for Children,” a celebration of the Polish poet Julian Tuwin’s children’s poems (his work has been compared to Shell Silverstein’s) by seven talented graphic artists. I can’t read Polish, but I could pick up on Tuwin’s virtuose and the poems’ vitality just by looking at the expressive typographic lines and the exuberant graphs and whimsical doodles that accompanied them.
A gorgeous poetry catalog including profiles of renowned poets from around the world was created to accompany an exhibition that will travel to major Italian cities. The exhibit’s first stop was at the Palazzo dell’Archiginnasio in downtown Bologna, where colorful leaflets with poems in different languages were distributed to those attending the opening (and what better invitation to poetry lovers than to sail between all those languages!…). Among the American poems distributed was Karla Kuskin’s “Words, and Words, and Words:”
What separates each one of us
from all the beasts and bugs and birds?
Well they have feathers, fur and wings
but we have words,
and words,
and words.
And since today, April 22, we celebrate “Earth Day,” I’ll end this post with another poem by Kuskin (the poem from Bologna introduced me - at last! - to her work, and the library books I borrowed upon returning home made me fall in love with it):
Dear Earth,
I miss your green and blue.
I miss my room and bear.
It’s dull and lonely here on this old star.
I miss your night, Dear Earth,
the moon above,
the cool dark grass below.
I miss each always-different, ever-changing day.
You know the way you are, Dear Earth.
Well, stay that way.