Tales of EUkraine at the Frankfurt Book Fair 2024 - A recap of our event

Tales of EUkraine came back at the Frankfurt Book Fair, the biggest trade book fair in the world, on Wednesday 16 October! The project was officially launched at the Frankfurt Book Fair two years ago, and at this year's event, we announced some of the main results achieved so far. Together with our project partners, we were joined by some of the publishers and other associations who believed in TEUk's mission and participated in the project. 

The event was opened by our Ukrainian partner, the Ukrainian Book Institute, represented for the occasion by Deputy Director Olena Odynoka. She stressed the importance of TEUk for Ukrainian displaced children and the relevance of the partnership between Ukrainian and European publishers for the Ukrainian publishing sector.

During his presentation, Enrico Turrin, FEP Deputy Director, showcased the project's main achievements two years from its beginning: so far, more than 140,000 books have been already published and TEUk is in line to reach its final goal of 300,000 books. This was only possible thanks to the extensive participation from European publishers: 21 publishing houses, from 10 countries in total, joined Tales of EUkraine. This commitment is also shown in the diverse catalogue of TEUk books: 61 titles have been planned or are already in production.

Enrico Turrin also showed some of the latest titles published with Tales of EUkraine, including the bilingual version UA-EN of "The Eh-Eh Adventures of Excavator Eka", by Victoria Amelina, a Ukrainian writer tragically killed during a Russian attack in Kramatorsk on 27 June 2023.

Later on, Nestoras Poulakos, from Vakxikon Publications, explained the importance for Greek publishers to support their Ukrainian counterparts. His publishing house recently published two books, "The Ant’s Mushroom" (το μανιτάρι μυρμήγκι) and "Trouble Teaches" (το πρόβλημα διδάσκει) with Tales of EUkraine. The distribution of the books to displaced children in Greece was organised in cooperation with the "Ukrainian Diaspora in Greece", and readings were organised in Greek and Ukrainian. The publications were possible thanks to the FEP's role as coordinator. 

Next on stage was André Störr, from the publishing house Friedrich Mauke. He was the first German publisher to join Tales of EUkraine and already published three books under the project: "The Tooth Fairy’s Tales. Part 1. I’m Betty. Nice to meet you!" (Geschichten von der Zahnfee Teil 1 - Darf ich vorstellen? Das ist Betti), "In Search of Winter Sleep" (Auf der Suche nach dem Winterschlaf) and "Skoyoroda Fables" (Fabeln). He also just published the German versions of Victoria Amelina's book "The Eh-Eh Adventures of Excavator Eka" and Volodymyr Vakulenko's "Daddy's Book", a Ukrainian writer killed during the war by Russians whose children's book is also available on our catalogue.

Finally, Grzegorz Majerowicz, a Board Member from the “Fundacja Powszechnego Czytania” (Universal Reading Foundation), also joined the panel. The Universal Reading Foundation recently published in Poland 60,000 books from six titles from our catalogue (10,000 copies each). Mr Majerowicz presented the idea of the Foundation to distribute TEUk's books in paediatricians' offices across Poland. The Foundation already reached out to the paediatrician association gathering paediatricians and will soon start distributing them. Through paediatricians, TEUk books will reach out to thousands of children across Poland!