The 2022 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award laureate is Swedish author Eva Lindström.
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?”
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.
[Based on a press release.]