Vibal Group enlivens 2024 Manila International Book Fair, launches 10 new books

I’ve been going to the Manila International Book Fair (MIBF) since it started, and I am glad that it has grown and that many people are trooping towards it. I can’t say that Filipino reading habit has progressed but I can celebrate that print is not yet dying. MIBF has become the longest running and the largest book fair in the country.

This year, MIBF 2024 was held from 11 to 15 September at the SMX Convention Center in Pasay City, and one of the recent developments is that it has grown from being a mere book sale to an event with many activities that include talks, performances, meet-and-greets, launches, etc.

In recent years, some exhibitors have also came up with conceptual or thematic booths. This year, the booth of the Vibal Group was one of the most spacious and most attractive with its Garden of Knowledge concept, with the Tree of Knowledge, a book shelf in the shape of a tree crowned with artificial branches and leaves, standing as an attraction. Moreover, they provided an full and interactive experience with a section for children where kids and their parents can lounge, read and draw, and an area for events such as performances, meet-and-greets, lectures and talks, aside from the main area where fairgoers can browse at their numerous titles and get their books signed by featured authors. In fact, their booth clinched second place in the booth design competition held by MIBF organizers.

The Vibal Group is known as a publisher of school textbooks but it established Vibal Foundation in 2007 to publish trade books as well as print and digital materials on Philippine history, culture, and arts. While the bulk of books that Vibal publishes remains to be textbooks, with about 70 percent of its whole production, its trade books have been gaining attention because of its beauty, scholarly value and intriguing subjects. According to Kristine Mandigma, Vibal Group chief executive officer and Vibal Foundation executive director, their bestselling books include their print of the 16th-century Spanish manuscript The Boxer Codex, transcribed and annotated by Isaac Jimenez Donoso and translated into English by Maria Luisa Garcia, Carlos Quirino, and Mauro Garcia; Father Manuel Blanco’s Flora de Filipinas, a book on Philippine plants first published in 1837; and Púgot: Head Taking, Ritual Cannibalism, and Human Sacrifice in the Philippines by Narciso C. Tan, among others.

Because of these efforts, Vibal was awarded the Best Academic and Scholarly Publisher citation by the Gintong Aklat Awards, organized by the Book Development Association of the Philippines.

Not resting on their laurels, Vibal Group launched 10 new titles during the second staging of “Vibal Tertulia,” a program of book launches, talks and performances, at the main stage of MIBF on 13 September. The new titles unveiled were Old Jolo and Zamboanga 1268-1945 by Mark Francis Francisco; More Mindanawon Than We Admit: History, Culture, and Identity in the Philippine South, edited by Jhoanna Lynn Cruz; More Political Than We Admit: Theories and the Problematic of Philippine Politics, edited by Julio Teehankee; the second edition of The Conquest of the Philippines by the United States 1898-1925 by Marcial Lichauco and Moorfield Storey, and edited by Dr. Rolando Borrinaga and Cornelia “Nelly” Lichauco-Fung; the second edition of Philippine Cinematic Art by Gaspar Vibal, Andrea Peterson, Nicanor Lajom, and Christopher Datol; The Twentieth-Century Philippines in Ten Novels: Literature as History (1913–1975) by Soledad S. Reyes; Insular Yet Global: Selected Essays of Fernando Zialcita by Fernando Zialcita; Colonial Philately: Philippine Postage Stamps 1854-1946 by Jose Eleazar Bersales; Travel Notes by Paz Mendoza Guazon, edited by Irene Villaescusa Illan; and A Visual Guide to Philippine Ancient History, edited by Vicente Villan.

Old Jolo and Zamboanga 1268-1945 is an ethnohistory of the two sites, detailing the origins, languages, cultures, beliefs, and traditions of their peoples as well as their turbulent histories.

More Mindanawon Than We Admit: History, Culture, and Identity in the Philippine South and More Political Than We Admit: Theories and the Problematic of Philippine Politics are additions to the growing More…Than We Admit series of essay collections. More Mindanawon Than We Admit provides insights into how Mindanao’s culture has evolved and at the same time remained integrated into both the historical and cultural narrative of the Filipino people, while More Political Than We Admit shows the inescapable reality of how politics is deeply interwoven into the everyday lives of the Filipinos.

First published in 1926, The Conquest of the Philippines by the United States 1898-1925 was a joint project of anti-imperialist Moorfield Storey and young lawyer Marcial P. Lichauco, considered to be among the important works that led the Philippines towards achieving independence from American rule. The second edition “aims to celebrate the work as a significant part of the Philippine independence campaign and compound its relevance as a historical text in the present for young readers and scholars to relish and evaluate.”

First published in 2020, Philippine Cinematic Art’s second edition sports a new cover and contains a new chapter, examining how movies have “mediated between high and low culture by providing profound narratives that resonate with a wider and more diverse audience.”

“On behalf of Vibal Foundation and Vibal Group of Companies, we would like to extend our sincerest gratitude and appreciation to the BDAP and its president, attorney Andrea Pasion Flores, the board of trustees, and our fellow publishers. We are sincerely and deeply honored by this acknowledgment and recognition by our peers in the industry. This award would not have been possible without our team, our excellent editorial and art production team, to my colleagues from Vibal Foundation, thank you for all your hard work through the years,” said Mandigma during the awarding ceremony on 11 September at MIBF.

Additionally, four Vibal books were included in the Gintong Aklat Awards shortlist of finalists — Nineteenth-Century Masters of Angono Art by James Owen Saguinsin and Philippine Colonial Photography of the Cordilleras (1860-1930) by Jonathan Best in the Best Book on Art category; Paseos de Intramuros: A Guidebook to Manila’s Walled City by Jose Victor Torres in the Best Book on Humor, Sports, Lifestyle, and Business category; and Heritage Dishes of the Philippines by Camille de Guia in the Best Book on Food category.

The Twentieth-Century Philippines in Ten Novels analyzes and interprets ten Tagalog novels published during the periods of American colonialism, the Commonwealth Era, reconstruction after World War II, and Ferdinand E. Marcos’s dictatorship, to explain the connection and relationship of literature and history.

Insular Yet Global gathers of the essays of a prominent anthropologist, written over two decades and compiled and selected at the suggestion of Dr. Jorge Mojarro of the University of Santo Tomas, delving into Philippine culture and history.

Colonial Philately presents Philippines history as gleaned from the stamps issued and used during the Spanish and American colonial periods, the Philippine Revolution, the Commonwealth era, and the Second World War, as well as examines the system of postage in the centuries prior to the invention of stamps.

Travel Notes chronicles Mendoza-Guazon’s travels through America, Europe, and the Middle East in the 1930s.

An addition to the Visual Guide series, A Visual Guide to Philippine Ancient History discusses the formation and settlement of the Philippine archipelago, as well as the cultures, traditions, religious beliefs, and governmental structures of the early societies and communities that constituted what would eventually become the Philippine nation. It contains photos, illustrations, infographics, and entertaining activities.

Mandigma promised that they will continue publishing books on Philippine history, culture and arts, and said that there are more titles in the pipeline. She revealed that they publish an average of 30 books a year, and plan to increase the titles to 50. They also plan to start publishing fiction by next year.