Meet Wilkins Farago at Fed Square this Australia Day

EVER WONDERED what a real live publisher looks like? If you’re in Melbourne this Australia Day, why not come and find out?

We’ll be making a rare appearance at a special outdoor Australia Day Book Market at Federation Square this Thursday. The market runs from 11am to 6pm next to the Fed Square Visitors Centre (corner of Flinders and Swanston Streets) and we’ll have lots of great kids books on display on our stall, including many at special low prices.

Markets aren’t just an opportunity to sell some books; we also enjoy chatting about our books and seeing what people think of them, so why not pop by and say hello?

Davide Cali coming to Australia in 2012

We've published eight of Davide Cali's books so far.

A great Christmas present for us and Australian kids. One of Europe’s top kids’ writers, Swiss-Italian Davide Cali, is going to tour Australia in May 2012. The tour is part of our activities as a Partner of the National Year of Reading 2012. We’ve set up a special page for his tour, which you can view here.

A little Christmas present from us to you

We had quite a bit of fun making this video version of Santa’s Suit, Davide Cali and Eric Heliot’s popular Christmas tale.

Feel free to share it with the kids in your life, whoever and wherever they may be.

A very Merry Christmas from all of us at Wilkins Farago!

How a book about a mum became a book about a dad

A librarian friend of mine maintains that A Dad Who Measures Up (2007) is his favourite Davide Cali book. A collaboration with Italian illustrator Anna Laura Cantone, the book is a rich, quirky and ultimately heartwarming story of a little girl who searches for a new dad to ‘measure up’ to her wonderful mum.

Here’s Davide writing about the creation of the book on his Facebook fan page  this week:

I think it was 2003 when I contacted Anna Laura Cantone. I had seen her first books and found her pretty interesting but I still wasn’t sure to call her until I saw the book of the bride [The Wedding Dress Mess]. It was really awesome.

I asked her if she was interested in working with me. At that time a little French publisher, Sarbacane, was translating her book and they wanted to publish an original project if she had one. So she told me that maybe we could try to work together in France. This would be the first of a long series of books I’d do in France, and the first of four I’d do with Anna Laura [their latest collaboration, What is this Thing called Love? came out in June this year].

In some way this is a commissioned book too. Zoolibri asked me for a book about a mum, to put alongside to a book they had translated from Belgium about a dad. I started my story telling about this very special mum, but in the middle of the book, suddenly it became the story of … a dad! So, it being impossible to give it to Zoolibri, I translated it into French.

A Dad Who Measures Up has now been published in France, Spain, Norway, Italy, Belgium, Taiwan, Korea, Portugal, Mexico, Brazil, China and, of course, by Wilkins Farago in Australia.

Our edition, the first and only English language edition, can be purchased in paperback or hardback here, or from your local bookshop.

Davide Cali on chocolate

I Like Chocolate

One of our very favourite authors, Davide Cali, has been reminiscing about his book, I Like Chocolate, on his Facebook fan page. We published the book in English in 2009 and it’s been a popular title ever since. Says Cali:

It’s my 4th book but I consider it my very first, because it was the “first” to be translated in another country, the first to receive an award (Eurochocolate 2001, a month after the publication), the first not illustrated by myself.

And the first commissioned too.

Corrado, the publisher, just called me asking: “Do you like chocolate?”

It’s funny that our over-10-years adventure and friendship just began in this way.

Maybe it should begin always in this way.

I worked with Evelyn [Evelyn Daviddi] on a second book and now we’re starting a third one. We don’t meet or call each other too often but when we start a new book we find again the way to work, as the first time.

You can purchase I Like Chocolate from your local bookseller, or online here.

We have a very exciting announcement regarding Davide, which we’ll be making in the next week or two.

 

‘Kampung Boy’ video passes 70,000 views on Youtube

What’s the most popular book trailer on Youtube? I don’t really know the answer to that question, but I’m thrilled to note that our video for Lat’s hilarious graphic novel Kampung Boy has now passed 70,000 views on Youtube. I guess that’s what’s meant by ‘going viral’. Quite amazing.

Have a look, and then see what all the fuss is about by buying the book Matt Groening describes as ‘one of the all time great cartoon books’ here.