Editorial

It's that Bologna Blues again…

A week after my return from the Bologna Book Fair, and I am still reeling. From the books, of course, the many, many books—enough to drive a literature lover mad with frustration. A sample here, a tidbit there, an epic there, a picturebook there. It does not help that I do not know how to stop. To quote Freddie Mercury, "I want it all, and I want it now!"—an attitude that will inevitably lead to exhaustion. And as if the books were not enough, thousands of literature people were there thronging, socializing, selling, buying, promoting, inspiring, talking, walking, drinking, dining, and dancing. The Bologna Book Fair is taxing for even the most extrovert of people, and I cannot but wonder how some of the more "lone wolf" type of authors and illustrators deal with events such as these. It must be difficult. Still, when the party is over, you miss it. It is special. For a few days, a select tribe of book people are gathered in this magic Bolognese space devoted to children's books (un-romantically named hangars 21–26! Then and there, books for children are allowed to matter more than anything else in the world.

If I am to single out one feature of the book fair that had special resonance to me, this year it was the exhibit of the ten finalists of the Silent Book competition (co-organized by, among others, IBBY Italia and Carthusia publishers). It has been a regular feature for several years now, and I always enjoy looking at the splendid work of the finalists. The winner is published after the competition, but publication is something one wishes for the others as well; they are all remarkable, thought-provoking, and deserving of a greater audience.

This year, the exhibition was particularly interesting since two of my students back in Sweden have worked hard on a degree project focusing on wordless picturebooks and how pedagogues use such books with refugee children on the island of Lampedusa, Italy. My students even made a field trip as IBBY volunteers to Lampedusa to get firsthand experience. Thus, to me Silent Books became a reminder that the world of children's books is connected and that how we work with children's books is something that goes beyond borders and languages.

Wordless picturebooks, it seems to me, are particularly useful when it comes to developing intercultural competence and representing otherness. Hence, when I "read" these picturebooks, my mind also kept coming back to the content of this congress issue—for these are topics and themes that are highly pertinent to the situation in Turkey, Greece, and Cyprus as well. These are countries that have been struggling for many years with large numbers of refugees. These are also countries with a long, complex, and intertwined history of their own. How can one live peacefully side by side? How can children's literature be part of such a process? These are questions prompted by the historical experience of the people living in these countries. Accordingly, several articles presented in the congress issue are concerned with these questions. Angela Yannicopoulou and Ilgım Veryeri Alaca write about "The Representation of the Other in Illustrated Texts for Children: Turks in Greek Books and Greeks in Turkish Books." Kostas Magos talks about how to develop intercultural competence through "the neighbor's folktales." And the term "enclavement," which has long been used to refer to the experience of the few Greek-Cypriots who chose to stay in their homes/villages in the north after the forced division of the island, is picked up by Maria Chatzi-anastasi in her article about the cultural identity of young Cypriots.

There is a great deal more in this rich congress issue. I am hugely indebted to Petros Panaou for his work on the Congress theme, for which he has also supplied an introduction to Greek children's literature. My thanks also go to Gülçin Alpöge for her introduction to Turkish children's literature.