IPA’s relationship with this beautiful fair goes back a long way and is only getting deeper. We are very happy to be a long-standing partner of the BOP Prize which has an impressive collection of alumni. And our partnership with the prize is even more special now that the Bologna Children’s Book Fair is a patron member of the IPA. This fair has a special place in international publishing and we are very happy that the fair is a part of our IPA family.
International Children’s Book Day is an initiative of another IPA partner, IBBY – the International Board on Books for Young People. Their theme for this year is The freedom of imagination and I particularly like the motto they have chosen from the poem The Language of Pictures by Rian Visser: Make pictures for my poem, and please feel free: these words belong to you even though they came from me.
The theme of freedom of imagination is that ultimate precursor to our freedom of expression. For IPA, the freedom of expression is part of a trinity of freedoms with the freedom to publish and the freedom to read. At the moment we see that young readers, children, are the ones being deprived of their freedom to read in many countries. School libraries, local municipal libraries, even booksellers are affected.
The freedom of expression, that ability to challenge ideas, to use our imagination is what helps us constantly bring into question the world around us, to understand it from different perspectives.
There are legal threats of course, look at the use of lawfare and SLAPPs to silence authors and publishers. Look at the attempts in different States in the USA to prevent certain books being made accessible to children, or to require age ratings. Look at laws in Hungary or Turkey where books are sold in plastic bags or cannot be sold within a certain distance from a school.
But the worst threat is cultural. That ideas become so taboo that booksellers and libraries stop stocking the shelves with certain books, that publishers decline to publish a book as too difficult, or that authors stop themselves from writing about certain topics. After time we cannot even imagine anything different.
I encourage all of us to stand together as an international book sector and fight for these freedoms. In the streets of my own country, where our democratic freedom is severely threatened, demonstrators, and especially young people, are holding books as symbols of resistance. Seeing this makes me think how important it is that these children had access to books, especially those which sometimes frighten their parents, teachers, librarians, or even state representatives. In fact, such books teach children empathy, equality, diversity and freedom. Freedom to choose what to say or write, what to publish and what to read. They help our kids to find their way towards freedom, which is the basis for each society to build or defend democracy in their countries.
In this current climate of war and repression, we must dare to imagine a brighter future for our children through the books we make.