海外出版商看好中国童书市场日益增长的机遇 - 2026年11月15日

For Giovanna Ballin, the China Shanghai International Children's Book Fair has become a fixture on the calendar. The international rights manager and editor at Italian publishing house Corraini Edizioni has attended almost every year since 2018, and about 60 of her company's children's books have already been published in Chinese, with negotiations underway for several new titles.

"I wanted to do this one that maybe there's already some Chinese publishers that want to buy," Ballin says, holding up a tactile book designed to introduce children to the world of books through wood, plastic and fabric. "I think the Chinese market is very good. There are always publishers looking for us, looking for something special."

That appetite was on full display at this year's fair. The Italian pavilion set a new record for exhibitor numbers, bringing together 15 exhibitors—ten of them first-timers—spanning children's book publishing, children's education, illustrations and copyright agency. Among them was Giorgio Arcari, editorial and art director at Sabir Editore, attending with his publishing house for the first time. He describes himself as excited and eager to connect with Chinese publishers.

"For an Italian publisher, the opportunities are huge because Italy is a little country with an obviously little market. We are just 60 million people. And so a market with 3-4 million young readers is an enormous potential market," he says. "Even if our culture is very different, there are some universal subjects that can be used to understand each other in a lot of ways." His goal in Shanghai, he adds, is "mainly to create the basis of future collaborations."

The fair's international footprint continues to widen. This year it attracted 152 overseas exhibitors from 37 countries and regions, including Germany, France, the United States and the United Kingdom. For Marco Rodino, managing director of the Marco Rodino Agency, the event marked a homecoming of sorts: he first visited Shanghai 30 years ago to discuss publication copyrights with Chinese publishers, and this was his first time attending the Shanghai children's book fair. What he found was a transformed industry.

"It's become very sophisticated, very modern, very varied. Every single topic and type of publication is covered. It's very exciting, very vibrant. Huge changes. Completely different," Rodino says. "There is always opportunity in China because the publishers are always very creative, always finding new ways of doing the distribution."

Beyond the business of rights and distribution, the fair has become a gathering place for some of the world's most celebrated children's book creators. Canadian illustrator and picture book artist Jon Klassen, who just won the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award—the world's biggest prize for children's and young adult literature—was among those in attendance.

In Klassen's books, words and pictures often carry different information, and that tension is deliberate. "You read the words, and you get some information, but then you also see the pictures and there's maybe not contradicting, but there's more information in the pictures," he explains. "What I'd like to communicate with that is to read very carefully when you read, and also look very carefully at what you see, and you can put the truth together between the two."

Belgian author Bart Moeyaert, the 2019 laureate of the same award, made his first visit to China to attend the fair; five of his titles have been translated into Chinese. His work tackles family, relationships, love and friendship—and, he notes, the harder edges of life. "I'm writing about some issues that are maybe more difficult in the sense of death and dying and the raw side of life. But that doesn't mean that it's not for children, because children are a part of the whole life," he says. "The nice thing about children is that they have to discover. Everything could be new for them. And it could be an addition to their lives: if they read, they can live another life or have another life at the same time, which is wonderful."

The fair's reach extended well beyond the exhibition halls. About 60 events—including new book launches, signings and salons—were held during the fair, while venues across the city hosted nearly 300 reading events, further enriching the public's reading experience.

ShanghaiEye Reporter: Tang Xiaofan

Source: Shanghai Eye