Each year the Bologna Children’s Book Fair honors a half dozen publishers with the BOP - Bologna Prize for the Best Children’s Publishers of the Year. The award, created in collaboration with the Italian Publishers Association (AIE) and the International Publishers Association (IPA), recognizes the best publishers from six regions worldwide: Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, Central and South America and the Caribbean, and Oceania.
The winners for 2024 were announced Monday, April 8, at a ceremony at the Sala Maggiore, an iconic building next to the fairgrounds famous for hosting the performance “Imponderabilia” in 1977, by Marina Abramović and Ulay, in which audience members were forced to squeeze through a doorway between the performers’ naked bodies.
This year’s winners, with citations from the fair, are:
Africa: Yanbow Al Kitab was founded by Amina Hachimi Alaoui in 2006 in Morocco. It publishes children’s books with a Moroccan/Arabic cultural focus in French, Arabic, and English.
Asia: POPLAR Publishing Co., Ltd., a leading independent publisher in Japan, has been in business for more than 70 years and aims to provide enjoyable and exciting books for children.
Europe: Mosquito Books Barcelona, a small Spanish publishing house, specializes in nonfiction picture books and has co-editions in more than 10 languages.
North America: Greystone Kids, an imprint of Greystone Books in Canada, produces books that help children understand the wonders of nature and the complex world around them.
Central, South America, and Caribbean: Cataplum Libros from Colombia creates books by exploring Latin American roots, recovering oral traditions, and collaborating with authors and illustrators to harmoniously blend text and image.
Oceania: Huia Publishers, a Māori-owned independent publisher from New Zealand, has been sharing stories that resonate with their people and value their culture and language since 1991.
