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In German and Anglo-Saxon publishing houses, opening a children’s book means meeting the person who wrote it. On the inside flap, on the back cover, or on the publisher’s website, you will almost always find a detailed biography: the author’s childhood, what drew them to writing, their influences, their relationship with books and with children. The author is a presence, a voice, a person you can trust.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In France, the tradition is different. The work often takes precedence over its creator, a legacy of a long literary culture that believes a text should speak for itself. Authors remain discreet, and the back cover belongs to the summary, not the biography.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In Morocco, children’s publishing has naturally inherited this French approach, compounded by its own challenges: a still-developing sector, publishing houses with limited resources, and a tendency to perceive children’s books more as educational tools than as literary works in their own right. The result: the authors who write for our children often remain complete strangers to us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At Agafay Books, we believe this is a missed opportunity \u2014 and we intend to change it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Who writes for our children is not a trivial question. An author brings a particular way of seeing the world, a sensitivity, a personal history that permeates every word and every story. Knowing that an author grew up between two cultures, that she chose a pen name as a tribute to a country that shaped her, that her stories are born from an intimate experience of the world \u2014 all of this transforms the way we read, receive and share a book with a child. The author is not separate from the work. They are its soul.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The same is true of the illustrator \u2014 and yet they are even more invisible than the author. In a children’s book, the illustrations are not decoration. They are a language in their own right. An illustrator brings a universe, a palette, an emotional world that a child absorbs before they can even read. The way a character’s eyes are drawn, the choice of colours for a landscape, the energy of a line \u2014 these are artistic decisions that shape how a child feels inside a story. Knowing who created these images, what inspired them, what their own childhood looked like, matters just as much as knowing who wrote the words.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That is why Agafay Books is committed to giving its authors and illustrators a real and visible place: their journeys, their inspirations, their childhoods, their creative choices. Through this blog, we will share portraits, interviews and behind-the-scenes stories of creation. Because we believe that parents, teachers and children deserve to know who they are trusting when they open a book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Moroccan children’s literature has powerful voices and extraordinary visual talents. It is time to give them a face.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In German and Anglo-Saxon publishing houses, opening a children’s book means meeting the person who wrote it. On the inside flap, on the back cover, or on the publisher’s website, you will almost always find a detailed biography: the author’s childhood, what drew them to writing, their influences, their relationship with books and with children. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3476,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_angie_page":false,"page_builder":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[26,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community-impact","category-expert-insights"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agafaybooks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agafaybooks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agafaybooks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agafaybooks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agafaybooks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3475"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/agafaybooks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3475\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3479,"href":"https:\/\/agafaybooks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3475\/revisions\/3479"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agafaybooks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agafaybooks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agafaybooks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agafaybooks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}