The Taiwan pavilion at this year’s Bologna Children’s Book Fair in Italy is set to display a diverse selection of children’s publications to show the creativity and strength of the country’s publishing industry, organizers said yesterday.
The pavilion will feature 260 items, ranging from illustrations, comics and children’s learning materials to smartphone apps and other digital publications, according to the Taipei Book Fair Foundation, which runs the pavilion.
Ministry of Culture official Wei Chiou-yi said the ministry hopes to foster copyright exchanges with other countries and has subsidized seven copyright professionals to attend the fair this year.
Taiwanese publishers are also to get a chance at the March 25 to March 28 fair to interact with publishers from Germany at a meeting organized to facilitate copyright exchanges, foundation director Huang Pao-ping (黃寶萍) said.
In addition, Taiwanese illustrator Shih Cheng-ting (施政廷) has been selected as one of 77 illustrators worldwide out of more than 3,000 applicants to showcase his works at the fair’s Illustrators Exhibition, Huang said.
The illustrators were selected by an international panel of publishers, artists and museum directors.
Born in 1960, Shih has created about 60 illustrations and books. The work for which he was selected is a series of pencil drawings with the theme of moonlight that he started creating in 2001.
A session will be held on March 26 at the Taiwan pavilion to exhibit Shih’s work.
More than 1,200 publishers from 60 countries participated in last year’s Bologna Children’s Book Fair, the foundation said.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
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