More than 160 activities will take place in the different bookstores and reading promotion spaces throughout Colombia, with Bogotá as the center, within the framework of the sixteenth Festival of Books for Children and Young People, which takes place until October 31, as prelude to the month of November Independiente, which will bring together the most diverse editorial offer in the country.
This edition of the FIJ has different spaces for the meeting of readers and authors, booksellers and publishers of Children’s and Youth Literature; there will be book presentations, conferences and master talks, readings aloud, workshops, story times, contests and professional conferences, such as the Seventh Booksellers Meeting and the LIJ Seminar. This year’s novelty will be a tribute to Alekos, for his career in the promotion and creation of content for children.
There are 34 bookstores in Bogotá and other regions of the country, 18 libraries, as well as the International Book Fair of Cali and the meeting of admirers of comics, known as SOFA, the spaces that host this new edition of the LIJ Festival, whose main theme is “Universes”.
This year, the organizers of the festival have decided to focus on this theme with the aim of talking about universes, highlighting them and understanding them, understanding their enormous value and, in this way, reconciling them. “The inner universe where our particularities live and that can be called identity, imagination, emotions, spirituality. The collective universes, those that contemplate the elements that unite us to others in our differences: the community, the families, the pacts, the nations”, indicates the official statement.
Tribute to Alekos: This year the Festival’s tribute will be dedicated to the writer and illustrator Alexis Forero Valderrama, Alekos, for his representation of the multiplicity of universes that orbit around children. With his illustrations, tiplines, art books, utensils, among other works for children, he has consolidated a work that bears his stamp in everything he does.
Alekos has illustrated nearly 60 books by other authors in Colombia, Spain, Venezuela, Mexico and Peru; He has been included three times in the IBBY honor list and has distinctions as an illustrator, actor and storyteller. In addition, he has exhibited individually in America and Europe. In this edition of the Festival we will be able to see two exhibitions of his work in the Virgilio Barco Library and in the El Tunal Library.
LIJ Seminar: On October 18, 19 and 20, in different bookstores in the city, a new edition of the LIJ Seminar will be held with the participation of publishers, authors and other mediators of children’s and youth books, in six talks aimed at building universes for children and young people from orality, games, text and illustration. These talks will be open to the general public and will take place over the three days at 4 pm and 6 pm.
7th Booksellers Meeting: It will be held on October 27 and 28 and will feature the participation of 25 booksellers from Bogotá, Bucaramanga, Cali, Medellín and Santa Marta, who will tour 15 bookstores in the country’s capital, Cajicá and Tabio.
Meeting between editors and illustrators: This meeting will take place on October 25, with the purpose of generating a space for dialogue and exhibition of portfolios so that these two great actors in the children’s and youth publishing sector can get to know each other, establish connections and think about future joint projects. This will be an event closed to the public.
Closing activities: For the great closing event of the Festival, Alekos will make a presentation that involves music, oral narration and singing, as well as the projection of images. This activity will take place on Sunday, October 30 at 11 am in the auditorium of the El Tunal Library.
Finally, on Monday, October 31, there will be a simultaneous reading in different bookstores participating in this Festival to explore aloud titles of children’s and young people’s literature that respond to the great theme of this edition: “Universes”.
The LIJ Festival was born in 2007 as one of the projects of “Bogotá, world book capital” and since then it has been organized uninterruptedly by the Colombian Book Chamber, an entity that brings together publishers, distributors and booksellers in the country, and the District Institute of the Arts – Idartes.
This year’s edition has the support of Biblored, the Planetarium of Bogotá, the Bank of the Republic, SOFA, the Gilberto Alzate Avendaño Foundation, the Colombian Association of Independent Booksellers – ACLI and En El Taller.
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The Festival of Books for Children and Youth returns in Bogotá