Partner Article

Children’s Lit, an Online Francophone Book Fair

The first book fair organized by Made in France will be exclusively focused on Francophone children’s literature. Supported by a panel of partners including the consulate of Canada in Seattle, the event will be held online from March 15 through 25. All young readers are welcome to join the adventure!
Orianne Lallemand, Mes histoires de loup, 2011.

Made in France, an association founded in Seattle in 2016, made a name for itself last December by organizing the first Francophone comic arts festival on the American West Coast. The event was a storming success, hosting a range of international artists including the illustrator of Billy & Buddy, Jean Bastide. They were joined by more than 3,000 visitors from 32 different countries, who all watched a full 33,000 minutes of video conferences on comic books.

For this latest event, stories abound. And the tale of Sylvie Joseph-Julien really stands out. The founder and director of Made in France is a French storyteller living in Washington State. She effortlessly skipped from giving guided tours around the leading monuments of Paris – the Louvre, the Opéra Garnier, the Eiffel Tower – to recording two albums of stories set to music, before moving to the United States in 2011. Driven by this same passion, she then encouraged the Made in France team to organize this children’s book fair.

Along with Sylvie’s stories, children and adults alike will be able to listen to others from around fifteen Francophone guest authors and illustrators. They include Jean-Claude Mourlevat, the author of many novels such as The Pull of the Ocean, which sold more than one million copies and won the 2000 Prix Sorcières in the “Novels for 9-12 Years” category; Orianne Lallemand, author of the renowned The Wolf Who… series, awarded the 2020 Prix Albertine Jeunesse in the “3-5 Years” category; and Quebecer Emilie Rivard, author of more than seventy novels including 1ère Avenue, which won the 2018 Prix Jeunesse des Libraires du Québec. Belgium, Cameroon, Canada, the Congo, the Ivory Coast, and France will be represented through fun virtual interviews and video conferences.

The goal of this unique literary fair is to bring together a varied line-up and meet the expectations of children, adults, school classes, and families. Parents and teachers are also catered for with online interviews and invitations to conferences on developments in children’s literature (led by Daniel Delbrassine, professor at the University of Liège in Belgium) and children’s newspapers and magazines (led by Madeleine Cosson-Flanagan, FLE education expert, consultant, and TV5MONDE-accredited educator).

Participants will also have a chance to make their voices heard as part of the Reading Games. This international reading competition for school children born in 2008, 2009, and 2010 is organized in partnership with CLE International, a publisher specialized in French-language school books. The objective of this first edition of Children’s Lit is to encourage and develop the pleasure of reading.

The whole team at Made in France is preparing to share its passion for French literature and reading, enabling as many people as possible to meet the authors and illustrators behind their favorite heroes and heroines. Join the adventure today by visiting the Made in France website!


Children’s Lit
From March 15 through 25, 2021