For its innovative work with spreading literature to First Nations children in Australia, the Indigenous Literacy Foundation (ILF) today received the 2024 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award.
Given annually, it is the largest in the world of its kind. The prestigious award comes with a cash prize of SEK 5 million (EUR 450,000).
The Indigenous Literacy Foundation seeks to increase reading and highlight the value of all people’s own languages and stories. In its reading promotion work, ILF emphasizes the importance of First Nations children seeing themselves, their culture and their language reflected in the books they read.
‘The importance of all people’s own languages and stories is the foundation for the Indigenous Literacy Foundation’s shining work among First Nations peoples in Australia. Their innovative activities, which build on respect, collaboration and sensitivity, are an inspiration for reading promotion work around the world,’ says Boel Westin, chair of the jury for the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award.
The jury’s motivation:
”With curiosity and respect, Indigenous Literacy Foundation works with reading and storytelling among First Nations children in Australia. In close collaboration with Communities, they highlight the value of all people’s own languages and stories. By spreading books and stimulating reading, storytelling and creativity, Indigenous Literacy Foundation builds the desire to read and fosters pride, self-confidence and a sense of belonging. Every child has the right to their language and their stories.”
About the Indigenous Literacy Foundation
The Indigenous Literacy Foundation was formed in 2011 to encourage reading and promote literacy by securing access to good literature for First Nations children of Australia. ILF’s reading promotion work is based on collaboration with and commitment from local Communities. Through various programs they offer book packs to children and families in First Nations Communities around Australia and on the Torres Strait Islands, translate books, organize reading out loud activities, and support the publication of children’s books that have been created in Communities. Today, ILF works in 427 First Nations Communities all over the Australian continent.
ILF emphasizes the importance of First Nations children finding themselves, their culture and their languages reflected in the books they read. With trust and respect for each Community and its unique conditions, traditions and wishes, and in cooperation with Community residents, ILF promotes reading for pleasure, education, the creation of new stories and the preservation of language. ILF’s innovative, creative work is an inspiration – not only for reading promotion among First Nations peoples, but also for work with children in other social groups whose stories, languages and experiences are not recognized by the majority society.
ILF is the fourth reading promotion group to receive the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, after Banco del Libro (2007), the Tamer Institute (2009) and PRAESA (2015), and the third Laureate from Australia, after Sonya Hartnett (2008) and Shaun Tan (2011).
A total of 245 candidates from 68 countries have been nominated for the 2024 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, the world’s largest children’s literature award (SEK 5M, $513,000). They include children’s book creators and reading promoters from around the world.
Again this year there are no candidates from the Russian Federation, a fact which is unaddressed in the press release. (Two years ago there were 17.)
Laurie Halse Anderson, one of America’s foremost writers for young adults, is the winner of the 2023 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award. Given annually, it is the largest in the world of its kind. The prestigious award comes with a cash prize of SEK 5 million (EUR 450,000).
Anderson’s breakthrough novel, Speak, was published in 1999 and has been translated into many languages and adapted for film. Over the course of her long career, Anderson has also authored texts for children’s books and picture books. “She writes about challenging topics in a way that both engages and moves us. There is a passion in her writing that goes straight to the heart,” says jury chair Boel Westin.
The Citation of the Jury
“In her tightly written novels for young adults, Laurie Halse Anderson gives voice to the search for meaning, identity, and truth, both in the present and the past. Her darkly radiant realism reveals the vital role of time and memory in young people’s lives. Pain and anxiety, yearning and love, class and sex are investigated with stylistic precision and dispassionate wit. With tender intensity, Laurie Halse Anderson evokes, moods, and emotions and never shies from even the hardest things.”
Laurie Halse Anderson
ABOUT THE AUTHOR. Laurie Halse Anderson debuted as an author in 1996. In her richly expressive novels for young people—all narrated in the first person—Anderson gives voice to the adolescent experience with sometimes brutal honesty. Here is resignation, even desperation, but also a determination for change kept alive by the search for meaning, identity, and truth. An in-depth introduction to the works of Laurie Halse Anderson, written by the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award jury, is at alma.se/en. Halse’s official website is: https://madwomanintheforest.com/
SELECTED BOOKS. Laurie Halse Anderson’s literary breakthrough came with the young adult novel Speak (1999). When thirteen-year-old Melinda is raped at a disorderly party, she calls the police, but she cannot bring herself to talk about what happened. Speak is a skillfully written, informed depiction of how rape survivors experience stigmatization as a result of emotional and physical bullying. It has been translated into many languages and has been adapted both as a graphic novel with illustrations by Emily Carroll (2018) and for film (2004).
One of Anderson’s most noted books is Wintergirls (2009). It is a harrowing and detailed documentation of two girls’ life-threatening eating disorders, including calorie counting and self-harming behaviours.
The Impossible Knife of Memory (2014) tells the story of Hayley and her father, who have moved back to the city Hayley grew up in so that she can finish school there. Hayley’s father is a war veteran who has PTSD and abuses alcohol in order to repress painful memories. Hayley—the grown-up in the family—lives in a state of constant worry about her father and hides her difficult situation from her school and the authorities.
The trilogy Seeds of America includes the books Chains (2008), Forge (2010), and Ashes (2016). The series opens in 1776, the year of the Declaration of Independence, and concludes in 1781. At the centre of events is Isabel, a 13-year-old enslaved girl who, with her sister, has been promised her freedom in her enslaver’s will. Instead, Isabel is sold at auction and separated from her sister. Seeds of America is an impressive picture of a society and an era. It reflects Anderson’s burning interest both in the history of America and in the ways that individual destinies are formed.
Shout (2019) is a memoir-in-verse in which Anderson writes about her own upbringing and how she found her way to books, reading, and language. Like Melinda in Speak, Anderson was raped at the age of 13, an act of violence that affected both her life and her work as an author. In one poem, Anderson writes: “The only thing that helped me breathe was opening a book.”
The nominees for the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award 2023 were announced today. A total of 251 candidates from 64 countries are in the running for the world’s largest children’s literature award (SEK 5M, $513,000).
The list of nominees includes authors, illustrators, and storytellers. The list also includes reading ambassadors, whose work can inspire efforts to stimulate young people’s interest in reading.
There are no candidates from the Russian Federation, a fact which is unaddressed in the press release. Last year there were 17.
The Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award (ALMA) is the world’s largest award for children’s and young adult literature. The award, which amounts to SEK 5 million, is given annually to a single laureate or to several. Authors, illustrators, oral storytellers and reading promoters are eligible. The award is designed to promote interest in children’s and young adult literature.
Eva Lindström (b. 1952) is a Swedish picture book artist. She has published some 35 solo titles and has illustrated many books by other authors. Her work has been honored with multiple awards. She writes stories that shift between the everyday and the existential, combining shrewd humour with absurd mystery.
Citation of the Jury:
“Eva Lindström’s enigmatic picture world is constantly transforming. Trees move abroad, dogs take on giant proportions and objects vanish, suddenly to reappear. With rapid brush strokes and dense colouration, Eva Lindström creates an ambiguous dialogue of text and image. The border between children, adults and animals is fluid. With great gravity and wild humour, they wrestle with the eternal questions: Who are we? Where are we going? Who took our hats?”
Eva Lindström. Foto: Jonas Adner
In the 1980s Eva Lindström began working as a cartoonist and published several comic albums. Her first solo picture book was Kattmössan (The Cat’s Hat, 1988). She has since produced numerous children’s books which have received many awards. She is the creator of three animated short films, and several of her books have received film adaptations, including En fågeldag (A Bird Day, 2000), Min vän Lage (My Friend Lage, 2001) and Jag rymmer! (I’m Running Away, 2006). In her most recent book, Ingenting är omöjligt för oss (Nothing Is Impossible for Us, 2021), the reader follows two small children and their dog as they touch down on another planet. It is a story that conveys a sense of isolation but also community, as well as pangs of loss for a missing father.
A number of Eva Lindström’s picture books have been translated into French. Two titles recently released in English translations are: Everyone Walks Away (‘Alla går iväg’, Gecko Press, 2019) and My Dog Mouse (‘Musse’, Gecko Press, 2016), both translated from Swedish by Julia Marshall. About the books. Among Swedish picture book artists, Eva Lindström has an altogether special profile. In both words and images, she portrays moods and emotions relating to both big life questions and everyday events. Her unusual narrative worlds, through which odd, lost, characters wander, possess enormous originality. Shrewd humour exists side by side with absurd mystery. Her stories can be interpreted in multiple ways and often have open endings that encourage reflection or raise questions. Her point of departure is the world as children experience it, and she captures the exciting dramas of children’s lives. The lines separating children from adults, and even people from animals, are often vanishingly thin.
The nominees for the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award 2022 were announced today. A total of 282 candidates from 71 countries are in the running for the world’s largest children’s literature award (SEK 5m, EUR 462,000).
The candidates list includes 72 who are new to the list, and consists of authors, illustrators, oral storytellers and reading promoters from several continents.
The award winner will be named on March 22, 2022.
Note: Due to WordPress’ inability to handle some special characters, those names have been copied into graphics.
The Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award (ALMA) is the world’s largest award for children’s and young adult literature. The award, which amounts to SEK 5 million, is given annually to a single laureate or to several. Authors, illustrators, oral storytellers and reading promoters are eligible. The award is designed to promote interest in children’s and young adult literature.
Jean-Claude Mourlevat is one of France’s leading children and young adult authors. Since his publishing debut in 1997, he has written more than 30 books which have been translated into nearly 20 languages.
Citation of the Jury:
Jean-Claude Mourlevat is a brilliant renewer of fairy tale traditions, open to both hardship and beauty. Time and space are suspended in his fictional worlds, and eternal themes of love and longing, vulnerability and war are portrayed in precise and dreamlike prose. Mourlevat’s ever-surprising work pins the fabric of ancient epic onto a contemporary reality.
About Jean-Claude Mourlevat: Born in 1952 in Ambert, a village in the French region of Auvergne, Jean-Claude Mourlevat made his authorial debut IN 1997 with the picture book Histoire de l’enfant et de l’oeuf. Since then, Mourlevat has worked as a writer full-time. He lives near Saint-Étienne with his wife and two children.
Selected works: L’Enfant océan (The Pull of the Ocean), published in 1999, garnered acclaim and introduced Jean-Claude Mourlevat to a wider international audience. In this episodic work we follow seven siblings, two of whom are twins, on their journey away from a threatening home.
The award-winning young adult novel Le combat d’hiver (Winter Song) from 2006 has been translated into 20 languages. It centers around four parentless students at a boarding school with extremely harsh and repressive rules.
Le chagrin du roi mort (2009) is a fairy tale in which the survival of an entire people is at stake. The story unfolds on a peaceful island somewhere in the north. When the beloved king dies, the peace is threatened. Courage, self-sacrifice and solidarity are put to the test when confronted with evil, barbarism and war.
In Jean-Claude Mourlevat’s most recent book, Jefferson(2018), the main character is a hedgehog who loves to read. When he is wrongfully accused of murder, he goes on the run, and his novel-reading habit takes on critical importance.
Nadine Bach noticed a package of ham waving at her from inside the grocery store. November was one of those months when the choice was between paying rent and buying food, and she hadn’t planned to stop by during her daily walk—but this ham was proclaiming that it was free.
Having prospective meals wave at her was hardly unexpected—Mixed Reality was finally maturing past the flying-whale stage of visual grab-assery, and was settling into the predictable role of being yet another advertising medium….
In more than 100 countries, citizens have clear constitutional rights to a healthy environment. The United States is not one of them. Nevertheless, for the past few decades or more, people have argued through the courts that the U.S. has an obligation to provide a healthy environment, including addressing climate change, as the Juliana v. United States youth lawsuit has insisted. But simultaneously, an emerging movement is focusing on the rights of nature itself: to grant personhood status to lakes, rivers, and plant species so they might have legal standing in court to defend their rights to exist and persist. If laws are an assertion of a nation’s values, what does it say that the U.S. grants personhood to corporations, but not nature?…
(2) ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS EXCEPT UTAH. Salt Lake City’s Fox13 reports “Monolith removed from southern Utah desert by ‘unknown party’”. You see, this is how primates really operate. That’s why 2010 is in the rearview mirror and we’re nowhere near Europa.
The now-famous “monolith” structure that was discovered last week by a Utah Department of Public Safety helicopter crew during a count of bighorn sheep in southeastern Utah has been removed — but not by government officials.
Riccardo Marino posted on Instagram that he and Sierra Van Meter went to the spot, located south of Moab and just east of Canyonlands National Park, late Friday night to get some photos. But when they arrived, it was no longer there.
Marino said they saw a pickup truck with a large object in its bed driving in the opposite direction shortly before they got there.
Marino and Van Meter also saw that someone had written “Bye B****!” and appeared to have urinated at the spot where the piece, believed by most to be abstract art, formerly stood.
(3) NEW ZOOM INTO FAN HISTORY. Joe Siclari of FANAC.org invites you to “Get ready for a trip to fannish London!”
We are planning a series of Zoom Interactive Fan History Sessions, and for our first session, Rob Hansen is going to give us an historic tour of fannish Holborn, London. Rob is probably the most accomplished fan historian writing these days. As most of you know, he has written the history of English fandom, Then and has put together a number of books covering various aspects of British fandom. Find many of them at https://taff.org.uk/ebooks.php. Reserve the date: Saturday, December 19, 2020 at 11AM EDT.
Despite the pandemic, Rob has done video recordings around London, and with historic photos and live description will give us a tour that covers some household fannish names and places. He has worked with Edie over the past several months to provide an interesting and fairly detailed coverage of London’s fan heritage. This one hour session is based on tours which Rob has given to individual fans and also developed as a group tour after the last London Worldcon. Even if you have been on one of these tours, you will find some fresh sights and insights. Of course, Rob will be live on Zoom with additional material and to answer questions. Please send your RSVP to [email protected], as our Zoom service is limited to 100 participants.
Worth 5 million Swedish kronor, the world’s largest cash prize for children’s literature is given to authors, illustrators, oral storytellers and reading promoters for work “of the highest artistic quality” featuring the “humanistic values” of the late Pippi Longstocking author, for whom the award is named. Lindgren died in 2002 at the age of 94.
The 2021 ALMA laureate will be announced on April 13, 2021.
(5) PROWSE OBIT. Actor Dave Prowse, the original Darth Vader, has died aged 85 reports The Guardian. He was a 6’6″ weightlifter who’d made a name for himself in England as The Green Cross man, a traffic safety figure in PSAs before being invited by George Lucas to audition for the roles of Vader and Chewbacca. He chose Vader and when asked why, replied: “Everyone remembers the villain.”
(6) MEDIA ANNIVERSARY.
1990 — Thirty years ago, the sort of horror novel Angel of Darkness by Samuel M. Key was first published by Jove Books. The author had a short career having just three novels credited to him, the others being From a Whisper to a Scream and I’ll Be Watching You. Now that would be the end of the story if it hadn’t turned out that this was the pen name for Charles de Lint who recently won a World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement, a rare honor indeed. Amusingly enough, Samuel M. Key was the name of the small monkey puppet that graced the top of his computer at that time. All three novels are now available from the usual digital suspects under the name of de Lint.
(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge and John Hertz.]
Born November 29, 1832 – Louisa May Alcott. Besides Little Women, Little Men, and more outside our field, she wrote A Modern Mephistopheles and five dozen shorter ghost stories, fairy tales, and other fantasies. Active abolitionist and feminist. (Died 1888) [JH]
Born November 29, 1898 — C.S. Lewis. There are no doubt folks here who are far more literate on him than I am. I read The Screwtape Letters for a college course decades ago and thoroughly enjoyed The Chronicles ofNarnia also many years back but that’s it for my personal acquaintance with him. I know individuals that have loved The Space Trilogy and I’ve known ones who loathed it. So what do you like or dislike about him? (Died 1963.) (CE)
Born November 29, 1918 — Madeleine L’Engle. Writer whose genre work included the splendid YA sequence starting off with A Wrinkle in Time and its sequels: A Wind in the Door, A Swiftly Tilting Planet, Many Waters, and An Acceptable Time. One of her non-genre works that I recommend strongly is the Katherine Forrester Vigneras series. (Died 2007.) (CE)
Born November 29, 1925 – Leigh Couch. Science teacher. First Fandom. Active fan, as were her husband and their children including Lesleigh Luttrell. LC had letters in The Alien Critic, Janus, SF Commentary, and Analog. Guest of Honor at Archon 1 – as LL was at Archon 3. (Died 1998) [JH]
Born November 29, 1950 — Kevin O’Donnell Jr. Writer who produced a number of genre novels and more than seventy short fiction works. He was chair of the Nebula Award Committee for nearly a decade, and business manager for the SFWA Bulletin for several years; he also chaired for 7 years, SFWA’s Grievance Committee, which advocates for authors who experience difficulties in dealing with editors, publishers, agents, and other entities. He received the Service to SFWA Award in 2005, and after his death, the award was renamed in his honor. (Died 2012.) (CE)
Born November 29, 1952 – Doug Beekman, age 68. A hundred covers, ninety interiors. Also comics, collectible cards, agenting; outside our field, advertising. Spectrum Gold Award for comics, Silver for advertising. Here is Time Out of Joint. Here is The Drawing of the Dark. Here is Spinneret. Here is The Stars at War. Here is an ink drawing for Homecoming Earth (and see DB’s comments here). [JH]
Born November 29, 1956 – Mark Ferrari, age 64. Having for years taken our breath away with colored-pencil images like these he was struck by a truck while riding his mountain bike, recovering but not enough to perpetuate his Prismacolor perfection. He wrote The Book of Joby, by which time technology could take him to giving good graphics again. Now he can make this and this. Do see his Website. [JH]
Born November 29, 1969 — Greg Rucka, 51. Comic book writer and novelist, known for his work on Action Comics, Batwoman and Detective Comics. If you’ve not read it, I recommend reading Gotham Central which he co-created with Ed Brubaker, and over at Marvel, the four issue Ultimate Daredevil and Elektra which he wrote is quite excellent as well. I’ve read none of his novels, so will leave y’all to comment on those. He’s a character in the CSI comic book Dying in the Gutters miniseriesas someone who accidentally killed a comics gossip columnist while attempting to kill Joe Quesada over his perceived role in the cancellation of Gotham Central. (CE)
Born November 29, 1971 — Naoko Mori, 49. Torchwood is really the genre appearance she’s remembered for and I see that she popped up first in Doctor Who playing her Torchwood character of Doctor Sato in the Ninth Doctor story, “Aliens of London”. She also voiced Nagisa Kisaragi in Gerry Anderson’s Firestorm, and she had the role of Asako Nakayama in the second season of The Terror series which is based off the Dan Simmons novel. (CE)
Born November 29, 1976 — Chadwick Boseman. Another death that damn near broke my heart. The Black Panther alias Challa in the Marvel metaverse. The same year that he was first this being, he was Thoth in Gods of Egypt. (If you’ve not heard of this, no one else did either as it bombed quite nicely at the box office.) He was Sergeant McNair on Persons Unknown which is at least genre adjacent I would say. And he even appeared on Fringe in the “Subject 9” episode asMark Little / Cameron James. (Died 2020.) (CE)
Born November 29, 1981 – Jon Klassen, age 39. First person to win both the Caldecott (U.S.) and the Greenaway (U.K.) for illustration with the same book, which he wrote too. Both This Is Not My Hat and predecessor I Want My Hat Back were NY Times Best-Sellers, jointly selling over a million copies. Previously the Governor General’s Award for English-language children’s illustration (Canada; Cats’ Night Out). Among other things JK illustrated Mac Barnett’s Circle. [JH]
Born November 29, 2001 – Mckenzie Wagner, age 19. Five books, the first published when she was 7. Maybe anything can’t happen, but lots of things can. You start whenever you start. [JH]
…Cynan Jones’s climate-crisis novel “Stillicide,” which was originally written as a BBC Radio series, arrives just as the bar has been raised for world-building. We want speculative fiction to unfold against a complex background, without getting bogged down in incidental facts that an average person would take for granted. Yet noticing the uncanny details of our lives is all we seem to do lately, and few authors can compete with the strangeness of the real world.
Over the course of several excellent short novels, Jones, who lives in Wales, has figured out a formula that seems to rise to the challenge. His favorite strategy is to build a story around a single clearly defined thread — in his devastating debut, “The Long Dry,” it’s a lost cow — that provides a structure for a series of intensely observed vignettes. This frees him to move between time frames and perspectives, and he often focuses on people on the margins.
In “Stillicide,” the through-line is an iceberg headed for London. The novel opens many years after Britain has entered an extended drought, and enough time has passed for one phase of responses to yield to the next. After becoming a target for terrorists, a pipeline to the city has been replaced by a train that carries millions of gallons of water from a distant reservoir, equipped with automatic guns to mow down any moving object near the tracks. Another plan involves towing a giant iceberg to the dry Thames, which will displace entire neighborhoods….
…Sweet Harmony follows Harmony, a young woman living in a world in which nanotechnology (nanos) can not only improve your health, but your libido, mentality, and physicality. Harmony’s surrounded by people obsessed with superficiality, and the more she is deemed unworthy by them, the more insecure she becomes. She becomes beholden to nanos, with almost all of her expenditures dedicated to keeping her esteemed beauty. But that obsession comes with a price.
This novella tackles domestic abuse, unattainable beauty standards, familial conflict, selfishness warring with selflessness, and vocational biases. Not one of those themes is undercooked or scattered. The secret is that Claire North uses the nanotechnology as an underpinning to all these themes. The story spotlights Harmony’s experience and growing dependency on the nanos and touches all the themes along the way, never losing focus because as it moves from idea to idea, it’s always grounded in a center.
(10) VIDEO OF THE DAY. In “Posten–Santa” on Vimeo, Santa’s feeling pretty grumpy because the icebergs at the North Pole are melting and the Norwegian Postal Service is improving its deliveries!
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Mike Kennedy, Michael Toman, JJ, Martin Morse Wooster, Cat Eldridge, John Hertz, Joe Siclari, David Doering, Michael J. Walsh and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Andrew (not Werdna).]
The Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award
(ALMA) is the world’s largest award for children’s and young adult literature.
The award, which amounts to SEK 5 million, is given annually to a single
laureate or to several. Authors, illustrators, oral storytellers and reading
promoters are eligible. The award is designed to promote interest in children’s
and young adult literature.
Baek Heena is one of Korea’s most recognized picture book artists.
With a background in film animation, her unique visual style features handmade
miniature figurines and environments painstakingly lighted and photographed.
She has published thirteen picture books that are popular throughout Asia, a
number of which have been translated. One of her most successful books, Cloud
Bread, was published in English in 2011.
Citation of the
jury:
With exquisite feeling for materials, looks and gestures, Baek Heena’s filmic picture books stage stories about solitude and solidarity. In her evocative miniature worlds, cloud bread and sorbet moons, animals, bath fairies and people converge. Her work is a doorway to the marvellous: sensuous, dizzying and sharp.
About Baek Heena: Baek Heena was born
in 1971 in Seoul, where today she has her studio in the Ichon-dong district.
She studied education technology at Ewha Womans University in Seoul and
animation at the California Institute of the Arts in the United States. After
working in advertising and multimedia for children, she began to create her own
picture books when her daughter was born. Baek Heena’s picture book worlds open
the door to magic and wonder, and her original techniques and artistic
solutions breathe new life into the picture book medium. Her bookmaking is a
time-consuming process requiring devoted attention to construction and
sculpture as well as lighting design. Baek has won multiple awards for her
work, both in South Korea and internationally.
Selected Books: Baek Heena’s debut book Cloud Bread invites readers into a world of “what if.” The story takes place on a rainy weekday morning when two kittens find a little cloud and take it home. From the cloud, their mother bakes magical bread that gives them the ability to fly. The book has given rise to a television series, a musical, and a line of toys.
Little
Chick Pee-yaki’s Mum (2011) is one of the few picture books in Baek
Heena’s oeuvre that is drawn in charcoal and ink. This crazy, quirky tale
paints a portrait of parenthood that is both candid and comedic.
Baek’s most recent
book, I Am a Dog (2019), is dedicated to the dogs of her childhood. It
is a finely-tuned tale of a dog who misses his mother and siblings, but comes
to realize that he has a new place in a loving household and a new job as its
caretaker. For this book, Baek hand-crafted some fifty clay dogs, each with
minute differences in posture and facial expression.
Other important
works include Magic Candies (2017), Moon Sherbet (2011), The
Strange Visitor (2018) and Bath Fairy (2012). Please note that the
titles of published books used in this text are not the original titles; they
are the titles used by Baek Heena’s publisher in its international marketing.
Eric Carle, Frances Hardinge, Shirley Hughes, Margo Lanagan, and Patrick Ness are among the 237 candidates from 68 countries nominated to the 2020 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award. The candidates were presented by the jury at the Frankfurt Book Fair on October 17. (Click to download a pdf version of the nomination list.)
The 237 nominees include 49 new names. The candidates represent all continents and are authors, illustrators, reading promoters and storytellers. 46 % are women, 41 % men and 13 % are organisations. More than a hundred nominating bodies worldwide have proposed candidates for the 2020 award.
Worth 5 million Swedish kronor, the
world’s largest cash prize for children’s literature is given to authors,
illustrators, oral storytellers and reading promoters for work “of the highest
artistic quality” featuring the “humanistic values” of the late Pippi
Longstocking author, for whom the award is named. Lindgren died in 2002 at the
age of 94.
The 2020 ALMA laureate will be announced on March 31,
2020.
The full list follows the jump. Links lead to more information, often in the candidate’s own language. (Apologies for the appearance of “?” where WordPress won’t reproduce the appropriate character.)
