Frankfurt Book Fair 2022

October 27, 2022

Under the motto "TRANSLATE, TRANSFER, TRANSFORM, Endless Stories", the world's largest book fair took place in Frankfurt last week.

Our librarians Lidija Babic and Sandra Krauser tracked down the latest book trends in Frankfurt in 2022 and were impressed by the gigantic exhibition with over 7,000 exhibitors from around 100 countries and over 400,000 book titles. In addition to readings by bestselling authors Charlotte Link and Donna Leon, this year's book fair focused on books for children and young adults. Paul Maar read from his book "Das Sams und die große Weihnachtssuche" (The Sams and the Great Christmas Search) and Axel Scheffler let the audience share his drawing of the Grüffelo. For the youngsters, Katja Brandis traveled to the event and enchanted the audience with her "Woodwalker" novels. On the TikTok stage, young Book Tok creators exchanged ideas, recorded their own videos and streamed them live from the fair.

A major trend is emerging in the fantasy book industry: Mixed genres, such as romance fantasy, are becoming increasingly popular, especially among young girls, and their followers came to the fair dressed as their favorite characters.

The book fair also gave our librarians the opportunity to make new contacts with publishers, contact authors for our book week, and order new class sets. A definite highlight was meeting the PR manager from Loewe Publishing, who will be helping to find new authors for online readings at our DISD Book Week in March. "We are very happy that we could inspire two comic and manga illustrators for our book week. A workshop with our student*innen is being considered, as manga comics are very much in vogue and more and more classic book titles are being illustrated as comics," Lidija Babic explained. For her, the meeting with children's book author with physical disability from Glücksschuh Publishing House was particularly touching. "Despite her physical limitation, she went to great lengths to sign the children's book we bought, gave us another one, and brought out the most beautiful smile at the whole fair," Lidija Babic reported.

Our librarians purchased some bilingual German-Arabic children's books, as well as a catalog from the International Youth Library from Munich with a great listing of Arabic children's books. The Arabic book booths, led by Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Sharjah, were represented in a big way and dealt with the growing book market in the UAE and offered a discussion and reading on "The German Anthology". The ZfA booth once again advertised various foreign locations and was pleased to be visited by DISD librarians. At each booth, they picked up new ideas and advertising for the latest children's books, games, but also apps and programs such as LESIDO, which in the future will allow interactive reading with children online. Children can use the app to invite their grandparents to read aloud online at the same time. A newcomer app is designed to have a calming effect on children and to reshape the outcome of the bedtime story itself.

Prominent personalities, such as Andrea Nahles, who offered a contribution on the labor market situation, but also Bärbel Schäfer gave the book fair additional importance and significance. Numerous panel discussions, exciting stage highlights on the ARD's Blue Sofa, as well as various workshops and a crime quiz invited the public to actively participate. Our librarians designed posters at the Gutenberg Book Printing Workshop and will share this experience with the DISD art faculty in anticipation of Book Week in March. In light of the upcoming World Cup, a soccer-themed event is planned soon at Bibilotopia and Reading Oasis. Therefore, the DISD librarians brought a great soccer book each from the Frankfurt Book Fair for the Primary School and for the Secondary School .