Bologna fair & Bookstorm Nigeria
The international kids‑book circuit is moving: the 63rd Bologna Children’s Book Fair runs April 13–16 and a Bologna partnership helped spawn Bookstorm, an illustration initiative in Nigeria focused on children’s books that reflect local realities. (If you follow publishing or illustration, this is where global rights and new talent are getting visibility this month.) (Publishing Perspectives) (Publishing Perspectives on Bookstorm)
A trade fair in Bologna is about to open on April 13, and people who buy and sell children’s books treat it like a giant matchmaking floor for stories, art, translation rights, film options, and licensing deals. The 63rd Bologna Children’s Book Fair runs through April 16 at the Bologna Exhibition Centre. (publishingperspectives.com) This year’s fair is expected to bring together about 1,500 exhibitors from 90 countries for four days of rights trading, awards, and industry meetings. In Bologna, a picture book can change hands the way a television format or movie script does, with one publisher buying the right to publish it in another language or territory. (publishersweekly.com) The official fair theme for 2026 is “Together We Are Better,” and the guest of honor is Norway. The fair is also running alongside BolognaBookPlus and the Bologna Licensing Trade Fair, which pulls children’s publishing into the same room as television, film, comics, and game licensing. (publishingperspectives.com) (bolognawelcome.com) That matters because Bologna is not only a place to show finished books. The fair has spent decades acting as a scouting ground for illustrators, and its 2026 preview says the event is built around finding new talent as much as selling existing titles. (bolognachildrensbookfair.com) One of the clearest examples this month is Bookstorm in Nigeria. Publishing Perspectives reports that Nigerian writer and publisher Lola Shoneyin built the project out of a partnership with the Bologna Children’s Book Fair. (publishingperspectives.com) Bookstorm is aimed at a specific gap: children in Nigeria often see imported stories and imported visual styles, while local illustrators have had fewer structured routes into the children’s market. Shoneyin’s stated goal is books that reflect “the realities, cultures, and dreams of Nigerian children.” (publishingperspectives.com) The project’s first training push was concrete, not symbolic. Bookstorm says it ran a 10-week illustration course with 16 Nigerian artists in partnership with the Bologna Children’s Book Fair and Mimaster Illustrazione Milan, a specialist illustration school in Italy. (bookstorm.ng) That course was built around portfolio work, which is the currency illustrators need when they pitch publishers and agents. The Book Buzz Foundation says participants created art for a story called “Zizah is Different,” a book about a neurodivergent Nigerian boy and his family. (bookbuzzfoundation.org) So the Bologna story this week is not just about one fair opening its doors in Italy. It is also about how a rights market and talent market in Europe can feed a pipeline for artists in Nigeria who want to make children’s books that look and feel like home. (publishingperspectives.com 1) (publishingperspectives.com 2) If Bookstorm works, the result is not only more Nigerian illustrators getting noticed at international fairs. It is also more books entering the market with local settings, local faces, and local family life, then traveling outward through the same global rights system that Bologna has been organizing for 63 editions. (bookstorm.ng) (bolognachildrensbookfair.com)
