The activities of the second edition of the International Children's and Youth Book Fair ended on Sunday, December 22. Organized by the Ministry of Youth, Culture and Communication, in partnership with the authorities of the Casablanca-Settat region, this event was held in the Anfa Park space, from December 14 to 22.
This edition brought together 340 exhibitors, direct and indirect, representing 29 countries. More than 40,000 titles were presented, with a total of more than 150,000 copies. The Wallonia-Brussels region was the guest of honor for this edition.
Regarding parallel cultural programming, the spaces dedicated to meetings and workshops hosted a total of 70 sessions. These professional activities aimed to support young authors and illustrators with a view to their integration into the children's and young people's book industry. The objective is to train a new generation of Moroccan creators capable of building a national platform for this industry, both in terms of writing, illustration and artistic design. The program included conferences, workshops and training sessions, including specialized workshops in the management of school libraries, intended for a group of executives from the Ministry of National Education.
At the same time, the seven spaces reserved for cultural activities hosted the program entitled “Les mots des arts”, which offered more than 405 activities. These covered various areas such as literary writing, media and cinema, theater, music, photography, bodily expression, drawing, ceramics, architecture, design and performing arts. Furthermore, more than 20,000 children visited and explored the space dedicated to the works of the famous Belgian cartoonist Peyo, creator of The Smurfs.
Participating institutions and exhibiting publishing houses also organized their own programs within the stands, including more than 300 varied activities: book signings, awareness meetings, as well as artistic and manual workshops.
This edition benefited from notable media coverage, provided by 65 audiovisual, written and radio press outlets, as well as live monitoring on the various social media platforms.
The second edition of the International Children's and Youth Book Fair thus constitutes an important step in the framework of this cultural event, which aims to promote books and disseminate the culture of reading as an essential lever for development. human, where access to sources of knowledge plays a fundamental role. The children and young people of Casablanca and its surroundings demonstrated their attachment to this major cultural event, as evidenced by the number of visitors, which exceeded 101,000.
