Because a person’s love for reading and the silent strength of a good book are cultivated from birth, the Feira do Livro do Porto soon recognised the importance of dedicating a significant part of its programme to its youngest visitors.
In the words of Agustina Bessa-Luís, the Feira’s 2015 honouree, “children experience reality in the only honest way, and that is by treating it as fantasy.” It was this unique ability children have to dream and create that spawned a multidisciplinary programme of activities designed for all ages. Ever since the Municipality took the reins of the event’s organisation, babies, children and teens are invited to build and unravel language and literature, without barriers, as they themselves become authors of stories and architects of worlds.
Through workshops, staged readings or make-believe, connecting theatre, dance, visual arts, and music, the children and youth programme has now established itself as a space for freedom of expression, critical thinking and personal agency, where reality is explored, new paths are forged and new objects and futures are created. In 2026, this programme was consolidated into its own interactive booklet, allowing children to design their own itinerary and extend each session over time. Marcel Proust had long made this much clear: “There are perhaps no days of our childhood we lived so fully as those we believe we left without having lived them, those we spent with a favourite book,” he wrote, in 1905, in Journées de Lecture.
