Quentin Blake looks forward to the Salon du Livre de Jeunesse in Montreuil. Montreuil is at the eastern end of one of the Paris Metro lines; so imagine, if you like, the Walthamstow or the Newham Children’s Book Fair. For the Salon du Livre de Jeunesse the whole of the main square of Montreuil is tented over and every French publisher who produces books for children is there.
But this is not a trade show where publishers do business with each other. The Salon is for the public: last year there were 140,000 visitors of whom 28,000 were teachers, librarians and other professionals and 32,000 were children. They have all come to look at books, and one of the impressive things about the fair is that it never loses sight of this goal; it hasn’t been turned into a media event, or a prancing-ground for TV presenters.
There are, however, and not surprisingly, other activities that relate to books: France Culture has a recording studio on site, and so has local radio; there are discussions about writing and illustration (with an emphasis this year on poetry); there are exhibitions of professional and student illustration, as well as a drawing workshop for children; CD Rom and animation are on the scene; and there are the book prizes - the Totems - of the Salon.
There’s also a fair chance it’s the biggest signing-session in the world - a determined fan could collect the signatures of several hundred writers and artists who visit the Salon during its short run.
It’s as one of this motley crew that I’ve found myself at Montreuil in recent years: signing books and taking part in interviews and discussions with the random and patchy collection of French phrases at my disposal. This year my contribution is going to be more diverse. A show of original drawings will parallel one of work by the French illustrator Nicole Claveloux; both of them take place in local libraries. I’ll also be chairing a forum of illustrators, in which, fortunately, each contributor speaks their own language. Among the participants will be Posy Simmonds and Peter Sis, who is coming from New York to show animated films and talk about his work. Gallimard will have just published my book Clown, which, as there are no words, has offered no problems of translation: even the title, by a happy coincidence, is the same word.
These are the reasons why I expect by December 4, and despite the kind attentions of my publishers, to be more than usually wild-eyed and disorientated. Nonetheless, I’ll have had the opportunity to observe one or two aspects of the Salon which I think are of particular interest to visitors from the UK.
One is about the look (what the French like to call le look) of French children’s books, especially paperbacks. In such a vast display, there are examples of fairly rugged taste, and, in certain corners, bad taste too. But one is also conscious of an expectation that a paperback can be well-designed, elegant, enterprising; and there are evidently designers who know how to produce the right results. It would be unrealistic to expect every series to have the visual sophistication of the teenage fiction series of Syros’s Les Uns Les Autres or Gallimard’s Page Blanche, but it’s important that they exist.
The presence of British illustrators is also evident and not merely in the French co-editions of their books: artists such as David McKee, Tony Ross, John Burningham and Babette Cole are as well known on the other side of the channel as they are here.
The Salon is run by Henriette Zougheba, dynamic woman who as director since its inception 11 years ago has made it the biggest and best-known in France; but it’s the biggest and best-known of a whole series of such salons, mostly arranged by library services in collaboration with booksellers and other local well wishers.
The salons of major towns such as Cherbourg, Nantes or Bordeaux are well known, but it seems there is scarcely a week when one doesn’t open its doors to the public. What is stimulating and also reassuring about these events for the English visitor is the opportunity not only to witness such an enthusiasm for books, but also to encounter an extended network of dedicated and interested people: parents, teachers, booksellers, librarians Familiar, in that one knows such commitment from schools and libraries here too, unfamiliar in the atmosphere and assumptions of its own extraordinary manifestation.
The Salon du Livre de Jeunesse en Seine Saint-Denis takes place from November 29 to December 4 in the Place de la Mairie, Montreuil.
