Just a Tad Overwhelming!

Books, books everywhere! The Bologna Children's Book Fair is rather an overwhelming place to wander! Row after row of children's book publishers with booth after booth full of titles from around the world. Austria, Belarus, Argentina, Botswana, Korea, Malaysia, NZ, Australia, the USA, Great Britain - publishers large and small, industry associations, trade publications, etc., etc. all here to showcase authors, illustrators, books, and products...

We cruised through two and a half of the four main exhibition hallsss before retreating to the hotel for a break, heads spinning, backs and feet aching.

A couple of strange 'ain't it a small world' moments included running into Andrew Wooldridge of Orca Books (also from Victoria) and seeing a review of BTS Racehorse in ForeWord, a magazine promoting independently published books.

After we regroup and recover a little, we're going to head back to the fair to try to get hold of a catalogue (they hadn't been delivered yet! someone missed a deadline...), which we will study over dinner and then come up with a strategy for tomorrow.

Yesterday's wandering through Bologna was magnifico! We stumbled into the Museum of Archaeology, which was excellent. Items dated back to the early Paleolithic period (700,000 years ago!) and the Bronze Age. There were also plenty of Etruscan, Roman, and Greek goodies to ogle as well as an impressive collection of Egyptian artifacts.