It’s Bologna Book Fair this week and two very important picturebook lists have just come out to coincide with the biggest event in the children’s publishing calendar: dPictus’s 100 Outstanding Picturebooks and the BRAW Amazing Bookshelf, which also contains 100 titles. While many of those books are not available in translation, it is nonetheless interesting to discover what is being published beyond our shores (click on the logos below to access the full details of each list)
I was interested to look at how this was split by country in each case. Note that these are the countries where the original publishers are based, and might not necessarily reflect the nationalities of the picturebook makers.
Countries represented
& number of books included
(curators)
France – 17
Italy – 17
Sweden – 16
Canada – 7
Spain – 6
China – 6
Germany – 4
Switzerland – 4
Argentina – 3
Australia – 3
Portugal – 3
USA – 3
Belgium – 2
Chile – 2
Afghanistan – 1
India – 1
Lithuania – 1
Mexico – 1
New Zealand – 1
Norway – 1
Poland – 1
Countries represented
& number of books included
(selected from the 3355 titles submitted for the BolognaRagazzi Awards)
France – 11
USA – 8
Canada – 6
Spain – 6
Japan – 5
Chile – 4
Germany – 4
Poland – 4
South Korea – 4
Belgium – 3
China – 3
Italy – 3
Mexico – 3
Russia – 3
Argentina – 2
Finland – 2
Latvia – 2
Serbia – 2
Slovakia – 2
United Kingdom – 2
Australia – 1
Austria – 1
Brazil – 1
Colombia – 1
Croatia – 1
Czech Republic – 1
Denmark – 1
Greece – 1
Iceland – 1
Lithuania – 1
Macao – 1
Netherlands – 1
Norway – 1
Peru – 1
Portugal – 1
Slovenia – 1
Switzerland – 1
Sweden – 1
UAE – 1
Nine titles appear on both lists (the difference in eligibility between the two lists might explain why there is not a bigger crossover):
Only two UK-published titles are represented, both of them in the BRAW list (click on the cover for more information about each title):
What does this mean for UK publishing? To be honest, I am not privy to how publishing works enough to make conclusions. But if I were to hazard a guess, I’d say the lack of Net Book Agreement and the lack of funding for culture (grants etc.) generally makes publishing more risk-averse here and this could be why UK publishers can’t often compete with countries like France. Canada or the Benelux. There are so many books on this list which look superb but would simply not fit the market here. Having spent a lot of time in Dutch bookshops last week, I came to the same conclusion. It’s such a shame for UK based picturebook enthusiasts, but don’t forget you can at least get hold of a lot US and Canadian picturebooks via the very brilliant Shelf Editions.
