2018

Xavier Deutsch was born in Leuven in 1965. He began writing in 1989 and dedicated himself completely to writing by 1996. He earned a PhD in philosophy and literature and has written about forty literary works, including novels, short stories, plays, articles and essays. His best-known works for young adults include Allez! Allez! (Come on! Come on!, 1997) which was awarded the Prix Totem du salon du livre de jeunesse de Montreuil and La belle étoile, (The bright star, 2002), which earned Belgium’s most prestigious award, the Prix Rossel as well as Les garçons (The boys, 1990), Tombé du camion (Fallen from the truck, 2005), Onze! (Eleven! 2011) and Hope (2014). Through his novels we discover young adults who try to understand the society in which they live: they wonder what it means to become an adult, experience their first love, handle their complicated lives when parents separate, look for a lost parent, deal with issues bigger than they are … His novels also deal with the wider themes of democracy, consumerism, economic power, freedom of opinion and the merits of resistance or obedience. His conception of literature reflects all of this: Literature is not an obedient mule that carries on its back the thought of the author, to transmit it obediently to the readers. Literature is a wild horse that springs wildly out of its author, without the author attempting to domesticate it, then gallops through unknown plains and mountains.

Marina Colasanti was born in 1937 in Asmara (then Abyssinia, now Eritrea). She moved to Brazil at the age of eleven, after having lived in Libya and Italy. She studied painting and etching at the National School of Arts but began working as a writer and journalist for a major Brazilian newspaper. She had already published two books of fiction and was editor of the children’s section of the newspaper when she published her first book for children and young people, Uma idea toda azul (A true blue idea, 1979). Uma idea toda azul, a series of innovative fairy tales with her own illustrations, received many awards and was published in several Latin American countries as well as in Spain and France. Her most important titles for children include Ana Z. aonde vai você? (Ana Z. Where are you going?, 1993) and Longe como o meu querer (Far like my dear one, 1997), both of which include her own illustrations, as well as A moça tecelã (The girl weaver, 2004) and Breve história de um pequeno amor (Brief story about a little love, 2013). Several of these books have won major literary awards in Brazil including the Origenes Lessa Award– Best Fiction for Young People and the Jabuti Award. She has also received recognition as a translator, her Portugese translation of María Theresa Andruetto’s Stefano (2014) was included in the 2016 IBBY Honour List.

The depth in content and rich poetic language are trademarks of her literary works for children and young people, and of her more than 100 fairy tales, many of which also appear fairy tale collections. Of her own work she has written: I don’t want to amuse children. That’s not my role. I want to talk to them. When I write for children, I talk to them, but I do not put myself in their place. As an adult, I chat with children. I don’t buy the idea that there is a child in me. The child I was, is gone… longtime ago! … But I take children very seriously; I talk to them with absolute respect. And it doesn’t mean I don’t want to see them smiling. It is more an acknowledgment of their intelligence … 

Kenneth Oppel was born in 1967 in Port Alberni, BC. As a boy he loved video games, Dungeons and Dragons and films such as Star Wars. He began writing at an early age and had his first manuscript published as the novel, Colin’s Fantastic Video Adventure (1985) when he was 17. He studied English literature and cinema at the University of Toronto, graduating in 1989, and then moved to England for three years. Upon his return to Canada he worked as an editor and continued to write. In 1997 he received wide recognition for his book Silverwing, the first of his highly successful Silverwing trilogy. Kenneth Oppel writes widely in the field of fantasy literature: animal fantasy, magical realism, steampunk fantasy, gothic historical fiction and adventure. His novels are carefully researched and methodically outlined before they are written and though they often deal with moral and ethical issues, they remain fast-paced engrossing stories. His body of work has been noted by scholars and critics for strong characters, impressive world-building and his ability to write across genres and age groups – he has written picture books, novels for early readers and young adult fiction. When asked where his ideas come from, he has commented: Readers – and not just young ones – sometimes imagine that ideas are rare and illusive things. But they are one of the most common elements of our mind’s periodic table. An idea starts with a simple question. It doesn’t have to be particularly unusual or profound.

One of his best-known works is Airborn (2004), which won a Michael L. Printz Honour Book award, the Governor General’s Literary Award and was selected for the 2006 IBBY Honour List. Other works include Half Brother (2010), This Dark Endeavour: The Apprenticeship of Victor Frankenstein (2011) and The Boundless (2014). Kenneth Oppel’s books have received numerous awards in Canada and the USA including those from the Canadian Library Association and the American Library Association. He has written over 30 novels and his work has been published in over 25 countries. He was nominated for the 2016 Hans Christian Andersen Award. 

Qin Wenjun was born in Shanghai in 1954 and has been a writer, editor and publisher of children’s literature in China for over 35 years. She has expressed her conviction that all children are worthy of being portrayed: Each and every child is an irreplaceable miracle. The beauty and innocence she depicts is too often forgotten by adults.

Her series of novels about schoolboy Jia Li and schoolgirl Jia Mei, the first of which was published in 1991 in serial form in Ju Ren magazine, were regarded as innovative and enlightened. The resulting novel, Jia Li in Junior High (1991), her best-known work, has sold over three million copies and was made into a film, a TV series, a stage play and a radio play. Other well known works include Dear 16-Year-Old Me: Up to the Mountains in Northeast China (1988), Prince’s Long Night (2012) and Aroma’s Little Garden (2016). She is among the most popular writers of children’s literature in China, winning the most awards in modern times.

In addition to writing, editing, and publishing, Qin Wenjun is also an activist for children’s literature and reading. For many years she has served as the President of the China-Japan Children’s Literature＆Fine Arts Exchange Association, promoting awareness of children’s literature and fine arts between the two countries. In 2008 she founded the Shanghai Branch of the Chinese Board on Books for Young People (CBBY). 

Triunfo Arciniegas was born in Malaga in 1957. He obtained a Masters degree in Literature from Pontificia Universidad Javeriana and in Translation from University of Pamplona. Before taking up writing, photography and painting, he had a range of jobs including blacksmith, shoemaker, bouncer, gas station attendant, bookseller, teacher and professor. In addition to writing both children’s stories and theatre plays, he directs children’s literature workshops and La Manzana Azul, a theatre for girls in Pamplona.

His children’s books and plays have received numerous awards in Colombia, including the VII Premio Enka de Literatura Infantil in 1989, the Premio Comfamiliar del Atlántico in 1991, the Premio Nacional de Literatura de Colcultura in 1993 the Premio Nacional de Dramaturgia para la Niñez in 1998, the Premio de Literatura Infantil Parker in 2003 and the Premio Nacional de Cuento Jorge Gaitán Durán in 2007. In addition, El niño gato (The cat boy, 2013) was included in the 2014 White Ravens selection and Letras Robadas (Stolen words, 2013) was selected for the 2016 IBBY Honour List. His work is characterized by its humour: in the story, the setting, the eccentric characters and the language. His best-known children’s books include: La media perdida (The lost sock, 1989), Las batallas de Rosalino, (The battles of the rose bush, 1989), Los casibandidos que casi roban el sol (The almost-bandits who almost stole the sun, 1989), El árbol triste (The sad tree, 2008) and Las barbas del árbol (The tree’s beard, 2011).

I have set out to tell stories with elegance and beauty, attending to the fundamental truths of man: their fears and their deepest dreams, celebrating life but not forgetting the constant presence of death, respecting the intelligence and the sensitivity of the reader. Poetry, humor and irreverence have been my working tools. 

Andreas Constantinides was born in Agios Theodoros Soleas in 1940. He studied pedagogy at the Cyprus Pedagogical Academy, at the Cyprus Pedagogical Institute and at the University of Athens in Greece. He also studied journalism in Athens. He worked for forty years as a teacher at all levels of the Cyprus primary education school system. He was a founding member and Executive Secretary of Children Library’s Club and for 25 years he was a regular collaborator to the Paidiki Chara magazine. Andreas Constantinides has written and published books for children and adolescents since he published his first poetry collection Rodocharama in 1982. He novels include The Great Struggle (1985) and At the House of Dreams (2004) and stories such as Eight True Stories (1988) as well as poem collections, including I Honor Your Passion, My Island (1994), My Grandma’s Narrations .. Stories Filled with Honey (2003) and Rose Aroma (2012).

He is recognized as one of the most awarded writers of children's literature in both Cyprus and Greece. Ηe was twice awarded with the Cyprus State Award and four times awarded with the Women’s Literary Team Athens  Award. He has received recognition from the Cypriot Section of IBBY and received the Hellenic Cultural Group of Greek Cypriots’ Award three times. In 2010, the Award Committee of the Cyprus Organization of Greek Teachers presented him with the award of Exceptional Contribution to Letters, Arts and Culture.

Louis Jensen was born 1943 in Nibe by Limfjorden in northern Jutland. When he was twelve years old, the family moved south and away from the sea. However, the great shiny fjord and the screams of the thousands of birds are always present in his books.

He worked as an architect and city planner for the city of Århus, but now is a fulltime writer. He began by writing poetry and books for adults and his first collection of poems was published in 1973. Ten years later, his debut for children was a short story, The Insect Man for the anthology Fantastic Tales. His first children’s novel was Krystalmanden (The crystal man) in 1986. In the best Andersen tradition he writes fairy tales that are indeed fantastic: about love and compassion, but also about the essence of evil. He has published nine collections of Hundrede firkantede historier (Hundred square stories, 1992-2014), though he imagines there are 1001 stories in his head. He has said: We are forever inspired by longing and we continually look for it in the stories we read, both as children and as adults.

His stories have been published in several anthologies in Denmark and translated into English, German and Spanish.  His most famous novel, Skelettel på hjul (The skeleton on wheels, 1992) the story of a boy’s search for the soul of his murdered dog, was originally a play.  Other works include Den frygtelige hand (The terrible hand, 2001), 2 kroner og 25 øre (2 crowns and 25 ore, 2011) and Rejsen til Gud (The journey to God, 2011). Louis Jensen has received all Danish awards for literature for young people and in 2002 received recognition for his lifetime contributions from the Danish Art Foundation. He has been nominated for the ALMA eight times and has been nominated for the Hans Christian Andersen Award twice and was selected as a Finalist in 2016. 

Amal Farah was born in Aswan in 1968. Her family later moved to Cairo and in 1990 she completed a BA in Arabic literature from Cairo University. She began a career in journalism, first as reporter then as syndicated columnist, writing on social issues, the right to culture and the importance of political participation. She began writing songs and poetry and established a children’s supplement for a major newspaper, gradually moving fully into children’s journalism and writing. Her first three children’s stories were published to great critical and popular acclaim. Her prose has been described as elegant and playful but spare, and her works as highly imaginative but also deeply philosophical. She has since written forty books, many of which have been highly acclaimed. Her book Al Sandouk (The box, 2004) was included in the 2007 IBBY Outstanding Books for Young People with Disabilities and Ayna Ekhtafa Akher Al-Daynasorat? (Where did the last dinosaurs disappear? 2006) was included in the 2008 IBBY Honour List. She has received the Suzanne Mubarak Prize for Children’s Literature twice, in 2006 and 2008. Her book, Ana Insan (I am human, 2007), which dealt with themes of diversity, respect and self-esteem, was included in the 2012 IBBY Honour List. She says: I don’t write for children, I write for childhood, a refuge for a lifetime. In 2015 she set up her own publishing house for children’s books, Shagara Publishing.

Leelo Tungal, born in Tallinn in 1947, is a poet, writer, translator and editor for the children’s magazine Hea Laps. She studied Estonian philology at the Tartu University. Her first collection of poems for adults was published when she was 18 and she has since written more than 50 children’s books, a collection of short stories and young adult novels as well as 12 poetry collections for adults. Her work is characterized by optimism, smooth storytelling and wit. Her novels. Seltsimees laps ja suured inimesed (Comrade child and the grown-ups, 2008), which was included in the 2010 IBBY Honour List, and Samet ja saepuru (Velvet and sawdust, 2009) are based on memories of her childhood. Of writing on her own childhood she has said: The writing process was difficult, because as I was writing the story down, I could feel the child in me who had been greatly hurt, but was still tough like a dandelion and fought for her life to live, and at the same time I had to suppress the adult who wanted to protect the titular character and expose the wickedness.

Other well-known works include Kristiina, see keskmine (Kristiina, the middle one, 1989), Marjajuur lume all (Root of a berry under the snow, 2000) and Lepatriinu faksiga (Ladybird by fax, 2004). She has received many honours and awards, including the Children’s Literature Award of the Cultural Endownment of Estonia in 1997, the Nukits Children’s Choice Award in 1992, 1994 and 2006. She was awarded the IV Class Order of the White Star of the Republic of Estonia in 2005 and the Pearl of Culture of Harjumaa Award in 2008.

Marie-Aude Murail was born 1954 in Le Havre into a family of artists: her father is a poet, her mother a journalist, her brother Tristan is a composer, her brother Lorris and her sister Elvire (pseudonym Moka) are writers for children. She studied literature at the Sorbonne University where her doctoral thesis was about the adaptation of classic novels for young readers. At 23 she started writing romances for women’s magazines and eight years later she published her first novel for adults. She began writing tales, stories and novels published in the magazines of the Bayard Group, including Astrapi, J'aime Lire and Je Bouquine. In 1987, her first children’s novel, Mystère (Mystery), was published and from then on she devoted herself to writing for children and young people.

Marie-Aude Murail has a gift for creating characters that have a special bond with the reader. Her novels explore various themes of politics, history, love, adventure and fantasy and have been translated into more than 22 languages. She has been awarded most French prizes in the field of children’s books, the story Miss Charity (2008) was included in the 2010 IBBY Honour List and she has been nominated twice, in 1996 and 1998, for the Hans Christian Andersen Award. In 2004 she was made “Knight of the Legion of Honour” - the highest French order for military and civil merits - in recognition for her work in the field of children’s literature. In parallel with her writing, she is an activist for literacy and the development of children’s reading skills as well as the rights of refugee and migrant children. 

Mirjam Pressler was born in Darmstadt in 1940 as an illegitimate child and grew up in the care of foster parents as well as in an orphanage. In her difficult childhood, reading became a secret sanctuary. After finishing school, she studied painting and languages in Frankfurt am Main and Munich and also spent one year living in a kibbutz in Israel. Later, as single mother of three daughters, she took a variety of jobs to support her family. In 1979, at the age of 39, she decided to supplement her income by writing. Her debut young adult novel, Bitterschokolade (Bitter chocolate, 1940), was awarded the Oldenburg Youth Literature prize. Since then she has written over fifty books for children and young adults and has translated more than 200 works from five languages. Her anti-authoritarian novels are considered modern classics of German children’s and young adult literature.

Her books deal with the difficult side of living; they don't come with a classical happy ending, but suggest, rather, strategies for survival. She takes children and adolescents seriously and shares their concerns. She describes their cares, fears, and longings, and puts into words the most complex and secret of feelings. Her utmost concern, as she herself says, is: To speak and to express fears, desires, and not to hide or cover up inhibitions. She has written numerous stories for children and young adults including Wenn das Glück kommt, muss man ihm einen Stuhl hinstellen (When fortune arrives, you need to offer it a chair, 1994), which won the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis and Malka Mai (Malka Mai, 2001), which was included in the 2004 IBBY Honour List. She has written on the themes of Jewish childhoods Ich sehne mich so … die Lebensgeschichte der Anne Frank (Anne Frank: a hidden life, 1992) and religious intolerance, Nathan und seine Kinder (Nathan and his children, 2009).

Mirjam Pressler is also an accomplished translator, translating from Hebrew, Dutch, Flemish, Afrikaans and English. For her work she has won numerous awards, among them the Sonderpreis der Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis for her complete work both as author (2010) and translator (1994). She has been nominated for the Hans Christian Andersen Award several times and was a Finalist in 2014 and 2016. 

Vagelis Iliopoulos was born in Athens in 1964. He studied Education and Theology in the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and began writing, publishing his first book in 1995. In 1997 his best-known work, The Little Trianglefish, was published. The Little Trianglefish has become an emblematic figure that promotes tolerance and understanding, an unforgettable character in a fascinating undersea world: probably the most famous contemporary Greek hero in Greece and beyond. The Little Trianglefish adventures have also been translated and presented at schools, theatres, literature festivals and events in Italy, Bulgaria and Germany. Since then, Vagelis Iliopoulos has written a great number of books for children and young people, many of them have been translated. His works include Little Brown Disgusting Ball (2003) and From Michele to: Fotis (2004), which he co-wrote with the Italian author Luciano Comida and was simultaneously published in Greece and Italy, later in Spain and Germany.

The pioneering character of his writing is his way of initiating a dialogue with children on issues that the Greek society finds difficult to bring up. He strongly believes: Children can be told everything as long as someone finds the proper way to do so. Today, having already written 88 books, he has become the main representative of cross-over picture books and short stories that master multiple levels of understanding and are successful in addressing different ages of readers. His books for both children and young people have been awarded by the Greek Section of IBBY, Greek literary magazines, Women’s Literature Society and the Embassy of Arabic Republic of Egypt in Athens. He was nominated for the 2017 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award. 

Farhad Hassanzadeh has had an influential presence in children’s and young adult literature in Iran in the past quarter century. Through his novels, stories, rewritings of old tales, poems, biographies, and journalistic essays, he has been able to encourage a broad spectrum of audiences in various age groups to read literary works. He was born in 1962 in Abadan, a town in the south of Iran by the side of the Arvand River on the Iran-Iraq border. During the eight-year Iran-Iraq war, Abadan became a war zone and many of its citizens had to abandon the town. After leaving Abadan and going through many jobs, he was finally able to engage in his chosen career of creative writing. His diverse experiences have enabled him to create a broad spectrum of characters, circumstances and locations and he writes for various age groups. He has written about the effects of war on civilians, migration and vagrancy, teenage love, children in shantytowns, teenagers’ special worlds, marginalized or fringe characters, social taboos, as well as different geographical regions and areas.

The strength of his fiction is not limited to his courage in bringing up fresh topics, especially in young adult novels. The form and expressive style he uses in his works are also creative and make them interesting to read. Farhad Hassanzadeh has succeeded in creating over eighty works and won more than thirty national awards. His best known works include the short story collection Kenare Daryache Nimkate Haftom (The seventh bench on the lake, 2006), the young adult novels Mehmane Mahtab (The moon’s guest, 2008), Aghrabhaye Keshtiye Bambak (Bambak’s Scorpions, 2009-2016) and Hasti (Hasti, 2010) as well as the children’s book Ghesehaye Kooti Kooti (Kooti tales, 2014). His stories have been being adapted into films and plays. He received the Art Medal of the First Degree from the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance for creating lasting characters in children’s and young adult literature. 

David Grossman (born in Jerusalem in 1954) is a major figure in contemporary Hebrew literature, writing for both adult and young readers. His work has been translated into more than thirty languages, and has been presented with numerous awards, including the Chevalier de l’Ordre des Artes et des Lettres, Prix Medicis, the Peace Prize of the German Booksellers Association and most recently the 2017 Man Booker International Prize. He is the author of ten internationally acclaimed novels, three works of non-fiction and a short story collection, as well as many children's books, a children's opera and a play.

In his literary and journalistic writing, David Grossman does not shy away from complicated and controversial issues. In his writing for young adults Grossman has dealt with less common topics for children such as the relationship between a boy and a lonely old man and the spirited lives of individuals in nursing homes in Duel (1982); growing up without a mother and dark family secrets in The Zigzag Kid (1994); drug addiction, and runaway teens in Someone to Run With (2000). He has said: One of the biggest dramas is being a child. Grossman’s picture books in particular are considered canonical in Israeli children’s literature and are beloved by several generations. His characters are household favorites and his stories feature warm family dynamics and a mix of fantasy and daily life, such as animals in a painting coming to life or a meeting between a boy and a rabbit turning into an understanding of how the other is really a friend. His picture book Chibuk (2011) was included in the 2012 IBBY Honour List.       

Chiara Carminati is one of Italy’s best-known novelists, poets and playwrights for children and young adults. She was born in Udine in 1971 and studied Italian literature at the University of Trieste, then specialised in linguistics and text analysis at the University of Aix-en-Provence in France. Since 1999, she has written nearly 30 books for children and two essays on poetry. Her particular love is poetry and she has been active in schools and libraries with poetry readings and performances. Besides writing children's literature and poetry, she has also created several plays for children in collaboration with actors, illustrators, and musicians.

Her best-known works include Poesi per aria (Poems for the sky, 2008) and Rime per le mani (Rhymes through the hands, 2009). For her work as a writer of children's literature, Chiara Carminati won the Premio Nazionale di Letteratura per ragazzi “Città di Bella” for her book Diario in corsa (Ongoing diary, 2007) in 2009, the same book was awarded the Terre del Magnifico Award in 2010. In 2012, Chiara Carminati was awarded the Italian Premio Andersen – Il mondo dell’infanzia as author in recognition of the “the care, the passion and the dedication with which she offers the language of poetry to children”. She has written of poetry: The language of poetry is characterized by the attention and motivation of the signifier: sounds, rhythm, repetitions are endowed with expressive intentions as well as the meaning of the words.

Other titles include Mare (Getting to know the sea, 2013), L’acqua e il mistero di Maripura (Water and the mystery of Maripura, 2013) and Fuori fuoco (Out of focus, 2014). In 2016 she won the Premio Strega Ragazzi e Ragazze, the most important recognition for children literature in Italy for her book Fuori fuoco. Chiara Carminati was nominated for the Hans Christian Andersen Award in 2016.

Opening a book is like opening the door to different worlds. But what the end of a book brings us is not the closing of a door, but the opening of other doors, because when we read a story we come to see different worlds, and they are, in turn, beginnings.

Eiko Kadono was born in Tokyo in 1935. When she was ten, she was evacuated to northern Japan during WWII. These memories formed the basis of one of her best-known stories, Rasuto ran (Last run, 2011), and the experience of war as a child is at the root of her commitment to peace and happiness. She studied American literature and then travelled extensively in Europe as well as in North and South America and began writing. She has published nearly 200 original works – picture books, books for pre-schoolers, fantasies, stories for young-adult and essay anthologies – as well as translated into Japanese more than 100 works by foreign authors including works by Raymond Briggs and Dick Bruno.

Her distinctive way with words and view of the world through the eye of the child has captured young readers from the 1970s onward. Her Little Ghosts series featuring good food and ghosts—two subjects always popular with children—presents the exploits of quirky characters Acchi, Kocchi, and Socchi. Kadono’s literature is populated with unique characters endowed with the virtues and foibles of human beings everywhere, and her mellifluous style is touched with whimsy and humour. Her best-known works include Zubon senchosan no hanashi (Tales of an old sea captain, 1981) and Odorobo Burabura-shi (Grand thief Burabura, 1981), both of which have won prizes in Japan. In 1985 she published the first of six volumes of Majo no takkyubin (Kiki’s delivery service, 1985) that won the Noma and Shogakukan Prizes and was selected for the IBBY Honour List in 1986. Eiko Kadono has also been a champion of reading and books for children and has been recognised for her contributions to children literature with the Medal with Purple Ribbon in 2000, and the Order of the Rising Sun – Gold Rays with Rosette in 2014. She was nominated for the Hans Christian Andersen Award in 2016.  

Inese Zandere is a Latvian poet, writer and editor-in-chief of the Liels un mazs publishing house. She was born in Dobele in 1958 and grew up in a family of teachers. She graduated from the University of Latvia with a degree in philosophy and has worked as a compiler, editor and scriptwriter for several newspapers, magazines and publishing houses, and film studios. She has written more than 30 books for children and young people and during the last 20 years has been actively involved in projects related to children's literature and cultural education. She is one of the founders of the Annual Baltic Sea Region Jānis Baltvilks International Prize in Children’s Literature and Book Art. Her picture book, Māsa un Brālis (Sister and brother, 2006) won the Jānis Baltvilks award and was selected for the 2008 IBBY Honour List.

Her conceptual book of poems for children Iekšiņa un āriņa (Innies and outies, 2002/2004) embodies the intention of thinking characteristic for contemporary Latvian children’s poetry in general: feel first, think and understand afterwards. These poems, in which humorous characters and great seriousness live side by side on the same page are musical and easy to memorise and are frequently used as song lyrics. She has commented: For a child, reciting poems, singing and chanting are an instinctive endeavour to arrange the world into small comprehensible structures that stick in one’s memory. Rhythmic organisation of the text, permitting the magic of formulas and game to take over, has always been the attempt of a human being to somehow overcome the chaos around.

Her collections of fairy tales animate the emotions as well as the intellect. Her poems, fairy tales, plays and scripts have inspired the creation of several animation films, theatre plays and operas for children. Her short fairy tales about the curious characters called the Shammies – Sockie, Hankie, Mitten and Pillow – have earned wide recognition and have been turned into eight colourful, witty and musical animation films.

Dashdondog Jamba was born 1941 in Buregkhangai soum in Bulgan Province. Even as a young child he liked to describe things elaborately, by drawing pictures in the snow or using clay from the river. His first book of poems was published when he was 17. Since then he has published over 70 books of tales, stories, lyrics, verses and poems for children: 24 of his books have been published abroad. His stories are humanistic, sometimes humorous and often philosophical; his poetry is rhythmic and melodic. He has worked as editor-in-chief of Mongolian children’s and youth newspapers and magazines. During the Communist era, he was named as a dissident and forbidden to write so he began to translate and publish books by foreign writers starting with the Hans Christian Andersen stories. He has been named Mongolian honorary writer and won the Literature Award twice. Three of his books have been honoured as Best Book of the Year. He has been active in promoting children’s reading and literature by working with the Children’s Publishing House, the Union of Children’s Book Illustrators and the Children’s Cultural Foundation. His Mobile Library project won the 2006 IBBY-Asahi Reading Promotion Award. His best known works include Smart boy (1958), Father, mother and I (1971), Tales on horseback (1999), Stone legends (2000), Camel with seven humps (2002) and Altan Kourash (The golden neighbour, 2003), which was selected for the 2006 IBBY Honour List. Sadly, Dashdondog Jamba passed away in June 2017. 

Edward van de Vendel was born in Leerdam in 1964 and now lives in Rotterdam. He started writing songs and cabaret acts in secondary school and later went to the pedagogical academy; afterwards he became principal of a primary school. Since 2001 he has been a fulltime writer and has written picture books, poetry for children and young adults, as well as songs, novels and non-fiction books about various topics, such as football – his favorite sport. He is also the initiator of numerous literary projects for young adults and translates children’s books from a wide range of languages (English, Swedish, Norwegian, Italian, German and Danish) into Dutch.

Edward van de Vendel’s work is characterized by its sparkling cheerfulness and at the same time by its capability to discuss serious topics in an appealing way. He has written happy and playful poetry for small children about the character, Superguppie, in which he plays with rhyme and syntax. He has also written about concealing a homosexual relationship in a football team in De dagen van de bluegrassliefde (The days of bluegrass love, 1999) by structuring the book as a football match (first half, half-time, second half). He has also adapted existing tales in a captivating way. Joost van der Vondel’s famous play Gijsbrecht van Aemstel was adapted for the children’s book Gijsbrecht in 1998: telling the raw story of the battle for Amsterdam in 1302 in a fast-paced lightly rhyming manner. Another unusual adaptation is Rood rood Roodkapje (2004), which is the Little Red Riding Hood tale retold in an unusually symbolic and cruel way.

Edward van de Vendel has won many national and international prizes. Most recently, in 2016, he won the Gouden Lijst for his young adult novel Oliver, the Woutertje Pieterse Prize and a Zilveren Griffel for his novel Stem op de Okapi  (Vote for the okapi, 2015) and the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis in 2016 for his picture book Het hondje dat Nino niet had, (The dog that Nino didn’t have, 2013). 

Joy Cowley was born as the eldest of five children in Levin in 1936. She initially struggled with reading and writing in school and when one of her own children had the same difficulties she began writing stories that appealed to him. Her first children’s stories were published in The School Journal, a publication distributed free to schools in New Zealand. She has written early-reader books that have become classics in New Zealand and subsequently spread all over the English-speaking world. She has said of her philosophy of books for new readers: Children learning to read need to see themselves as successful long before they are in fact fluent readers. They need a real story that is interesting, entertaining, educationally and emotionally supportive, a story that is child-centred.

Her two most famous characters are Greedy Cat (1983) and Mrs Wishy-Washy (1980). She has written books for emergent readers, picture books such as The Duck in the Gun (1984) and Snake and Lizard (2007), educational books such as The Red-Eyed Tree Frog (1999) as well as young adult fiction, Dunger (2013). Twists and turns of relationships feature in much of Joy’s writing as does her love of the New Zealand countryside, both feature in Dunger where she explores family relationships with wit, warm humour and wisdom.

Joy Cowley has been actively involved in encouraging young writers through courses, seminars and workshops worldwide. Her enormous contribution to children’s literature has been recognised with some of New Zealand’s highest honours: Order of the British Empire (OBE) 1992 for services to children’s literature, Distinguished Companion to the New Zealand Order of Merit 2005, New Zealand Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement in Fiction, 2010 and the 1993 Storylines Margaret Mahy Medal. She was nominated for the Hans Christian Andersen Award in 2016. Joy Cowley is the Patron of Storylines Children’s Literature Charitable Trust of New Zealand which, in 2002, established the Joy Cowley Award for picture book manuscripts. 

Marcin Szczygielski (born 1972 in Warsaw) is a writer and graphic designer. He is the author of theatrical plays as well as novels for adults and young adults. He worked as art the director of Latarnik publishing house and his graphic art was published in several Polish monthlies. His fictional debut was the humorous adult novel PL-Boy in 2003 followed by several novels that established him as one of the most-read authors of popular literature in Poland.

Starting with his first young adult novel, Omega (2009), magic, supernatural events and characters are at the crux of the secondary worlds in his novels. Important influences have been British fantasy fiction and the works of Lewis Carroll. His literary worlds are usually constructed around intensely experienced events: whether historical (Arka Czasu, Rafe and the ark of time, 2013), or contemporary (Omega), fantastic (Czarny Mlyn, The black mill, 2010) or realistic (Za niebieskimi drzwiami, Behind the blue door, 2010). These events affect the outside world and the protagonists’ perception of reality. They are connected with danger, risk, change and anomaly and bring about transformations after which the world can never be the same as before. His protagonist are, however, never passive and bravely face the challenge.

Marcin Szczygielski has received over twenty awards and distinctions in Poland and abroad for his work. Four of his books have been distinguished in The Book of the Year Contest organized by the Polish Section of IBBY. Za niebieskimi drzwiami was selected for the 2012 IBBY Honour List. He was also awarded first prize in the last three (out of four) editions of the Astrid Lindgren competition organized by ABC XXI All of Poland Reads to Kids Foundation. 

Andrey Usachev was born in 1958 in Moscow. He began a technical education and then completed his studies at the Philological Faculty of Tver State University. He had a wide range of jobs and then in 1987 began to write, in particular poetry. With the book of poems If You Throw a Stone Up he won the All-Russian Competition for Young Writers of Children’s Literature in 1990. Since then he has produced over 300 works for children, several of which are used in Russian schools as teaching aids, including Deklaraciya prav cheloveka dlya detey ivzroslyh (Declaration of human rights for children and adults, 1994). Other well-known works include Umnay sobachka (Clever doggy Sonya, 2009) and Velikiy moguchiy russiky yazik (The great mighty Russian language, 2012), which was selected for the 2012 IBBY Honour List, and Vse o Dedomorozovke (All about Dedomorozovka, 2014). Aside from poetry and prose, Andrey Usachev has written for the stage: puppet theatre, musical productions and plays as well as feature films and television series. His books have been translated into 11 languages. He has been awarded several literary prizes in Russia, including the Book of the Year prize in 2005 for his poetry collection 333 Cats. In 2009 he was nominated for the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award and in 2016 for the Hans Christian Andersen Award.

Where do I draw inspiration? A six-year-old girl asked me this question but she formulated it differently: “In what place do you have inspiration?” I remember I was struck by fineness of the question. I answered: “In my head… and sometimes in my heart.” But later I understood that she meant a concrete location. And I answered: “In the kitchen. There is a fridge, a teapot, sweets and silence at night.”  

Peter Svetina was born in 1970 in Ljubljana. He studied Slovene Language and Literature at the University of Ljubljana, where he obtained a PhD in 2001 in early Slovenian Literature. Since 2007 he has been a lecturer at the University of Klagenfurt in Austria.

He is an author of short stories, novels, picture books and poetry for children, young adults and adults. He also translates poetry and children’s literature from English, German, Croatian and Czech and works as an editor for poetry and literature textbooks. His writing includes both language play and real-life topics with his distinctive method of combining nonsense and realism. His storytelling is similar to his poetry, combining a realistic environment with elements of nonsense and lyricism, comedy with folklore, and linguistic experimentation with a non-intrusive moral evaluation of characters’ actions. To date, he has published 20 books for children and young people. Three of his stories have been adapted for puppet shows and some poems and stories have also been translated into other languages. His children’s works include the picture book Klobuk gospoda Konstantina (Mr Constantine’s hat, 2007), winner of the Original Slovenian Picture Book Award in 2008, Modrost nilskih konjev  (Hippopotamus wisdom, 2010), Kako je Jaromir iskal srečo  (How Jaromir sought happiness, 2010), Čudežni prstan  (The magic ring, 2011), Mrožek, mrožek (The little walrus, 2013) and the poetry collection Mimosvet  (By-world, 2001), Pesmi iz pralnega stroja (Poems from the washing machine, 2006) and Domače naloge (Home works, 2014). Ropotarna (The lumber room) received the Golden Pear Award for the best Slovene book for young people and the Večernica Award in 2013 and was included in the 2016 IBBY Honour List.

I feel like sometimes when I’m writing, that the words are writing themselves. Not everything is thought out in advance, you simply get into a certain mood and things come together. If you’re happy with the result, you keep it, if not, you throw it out. 

Alfredo Gómez Cerdá was born in Madrid in 1951. He completed a degree in Spanish Philology and began writing plays, then moved to children’s and young adult literature. He has since published around 120 books – from short stories to novels - written for all ages and a variety of genres, moving with ease between reality and fantasy, between action and social criticism, between humour and tenderness. His writing style is concise, clear, captivating and powerful. He likes to say that his work is a combination of two viewpoints: one gazing outward, nourished by the world in which we live, and the other gazing inward, delving into the complexity of human beings and their feelings.

The literary work of Alfredo Gómez Cerdá has been recognised with the most prestigious awards in Spain, among which the most notable are: the ASSITEJ Theatre Award for his play La guerra de nunca acabar (The never-ending war, 1990); the Cervantes Chico Award, in recognition of his life’s work, voted for by school pupils, teachers and literary experts; the National Award for Children’s and Young Adults’ Literature for Barro de Medellín (Mud of Medellin, 2008) and the HacheAward for El rostro de la sombra (The face of the darkness, 2011), voted for by readers. He has also won several of the most famous prizes awarded by Spanish publishing houses. His work has merited recognition abroad with the Il Paese dei Bambini in Italy and, on two occasions, the White Ravens for Tenía miedo a las Gallinas (The tiger who was afraid of hens, 2004) in 2005 and Barro deMedellín in 2009.

There is no need to become a child again to write children’s literature. All that is required is a viewpoint – always horizontal – which builds a bridge between the heart of the child and the heart of the writer.

Ulf Stark was born in Stureby, near Stockholm in 1944 and died in June 2017. He has written poems for children, picture books, middle grade novels as well as young adult literature. His writing breakthrough came in 1984 with Dårfinkar och Dönickar (Fruitloops and dipsticks), a novel for teens that revolutionized literature for young people in Sweden. Its fresh, energetic language and authentic character portrayal resonated with readers. The female protagonist, Simone, by mistake thought of as a boy called Simon, challenges every preconceived notion of gender identity. The story is boldly and finely balanced between the most profound seriousness and crazy humour. Ulf Stark has said: I think grief has to be included so that the joy is clear.

Many of his stories are set in the landscape of his childhood, Stureby, most notably the critically acclaimed Stureby series that includes Min vän Percy’s magiska gymnastikskor (My friend Percy’s magical gym shoes, 1991). In 1992 he wrote another classic of Swedish children’s literature, Kan du vissla Johanna? (Can you whistle Johanna?), which was nominated for the prestigious August Prize, won the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis in 1994 and was adapted into a popular film. Other well-known books include Min vän shejken i Stureby (My friend Sheik in Stureby, 1994) and Min vän Percy, Buffalo Bill och jag (My friend Percy, Buffalo Bill and I, 2004) in the Stureby series, the picture book, När papa visade mig väridsalltet (When dad showed me the universe, 1998), En liten bok om kärlek (A little book about love, 2015) and Djur som ingen sett utom vi (Animals like no one, only us, 2016). Ulf Stark was nominated for the Hans Christian Andersen Award several times and was a Finalist in 2000.

Born 1943 in Biel, Franz Hohler began studies in German and Romance languages at the University of Zürich in 1963. A storyteller since childhood, he left university to create a cabaret act that successfully toured Switzerland, Germany and Austria. A natural raconteur, he still performs cabaret while writing for both children and adults. His oeuvre includes television shows, novels, poetry, short stories, plays and songs. His first book, Tschipo  (1978), is now a classic and his books have been illustrated by some of the best-known illustrators in the German-speaking world, including Rotraut Susanne Berner, Wenn ich mir etwas wünschen könnte, (If I had a wish, 2000) and Kathrin Schärer, Es war einmal ein Igel (Once there was a hedgehog, 2011). Franz Hohler’s distinctive narrative style is fantastic-realist: the stories typically begin with a real life situation to which he adds a varied range of peculiar and surreal elements. His work has been described as playful, enigmatic, poetic, humorous, humane and radical. His collection of short stories, Das grosse Buch (The big book, 2009) are fairy tales that are not set in a castle, but in a supermarket and in other everyday places. Franz Hohler has received numerous awards, including the Oldenburger Kinder und Jugendbuchpreis for Tschipo in 1978. Tschipo und die Pinguine  (Tschipo and the penguin, 1985) was selected for the 1988 IBBY Honour List. In 1994 he received the Schweizerischer Jugendbuchpreis for Der Riese und die Erdbeerkonfitüre (The giant and the strawberry jam, 1993) and in 2013 he won the Solothurner Literaturepreis for his complete works. He was nominated for the Hans Christian Andersen Award in 2016.  

Mavisel Yener was born in 1962 in Ankara. She started writing early in her teens and continued to write stories for twenty years before she gave up her private practice as a dentist to pursue her calling as an author. Her debut novel, Mavi Elma (The blue apple), was published in 1998. Today she is one of the most renowned contemporary Turkish authors and has written over one hundred children’s, young adult and adult books. She writes in many genres: children’s novels, poems, short stories, fairy tales, radio plays and theatre scripts. The essence of her literary style lies in her uninhibited imagination. Her works ignite wonder, excitement and desire and call the reader to join the journey. They encourage the children to let their imagination free and dream alongside the characters. She has said: I love creating another world in stories. I find my freedom in stories. Everything is possible in them. Her best known works include Üşengeç (Dilatory, 2001), Mustafa Kemal’in Kayıp Seslerinin İzind (On the trail of lost sounds of Mustafa Kemal, 2002), Mavi Zamanlar (Blue times, 2003) and Kayıp Kitaplıktaki İskelet (Skeleton of the lost library, 2011).

Besides writing, she has worked as an editor for many children’s and young adult books. She writes book reviews and articles in the children’s section of the literature supplement of Cumhuriyet newspaper. Her short stories, fairy tales and poems appear in school text books, she has worked on braille books for blind children and she also produced and hosted two radio programmes. She has won a large number of honours and awards for her work, including the Children’s Humorous Stories Award, Samim Kocagöz Short Story Award, Ömer Seyfettin Short Story Award, Kosovo 2013’s Best Children’s Author Award, and the  Best Children’s Poetry Book Award by IBBY Turkey.

Melvin Burgess was born 1951 in Twickenham. He wanted to become a writer from the age of 13 and after leaving school he trained as a journalist. He moved to Bristol, where, sometimes unemployed and sometimes in casual work, he began writing fiction. It was not until fifteen years later, and living
in London, that he decided to take his ambition seriously. Within the year, he had a radio play broadcast by the BBC, a short story published in The London Magazine and his first children’s book, The Cry of the Wolf (1990), accepted for publication and subsequently shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal. Five more books followed and were equally well received, but it was with the publication of Junk in 1996 that he really made his mark. Junk is about a group of young people in Bristol
in the 1980s, and was based on his own youth. The portrayal of its character’s sex lives and drug use was immediately controversial, perhaps as much for its refusal to draw explicit moral lessons as for its treatment of these subjects in a book for young people. Junk is seen as a landmark in UK publishing for young adults. It won both the Carnegie and The Guardian Fiction Awards and its status was acknowledged in 2016 with the Booksellers’ Association YA Book Prize Special Achievement Award marking the twentieth anniversary of the book’s publication. Melvin Burgess continued to explore the boundaries of what can be shared
with young people in fiction in books that deal with teenage sexuality such as Lady: My Life as a Bitch (2001) and Doing It (2004).

Though the deliberately taboo-breaking teenage novels have caused the most uproar, he has also written historical novels and fantasy and for a range of abilities and ages. He wrote a novelisation of
the screenplay for the film Billy Elliot (2001). In Bloodtide (1999) and Bloodsong (2005) he created a richly imagined dystopian version of the Volsunga saga. Sara’s Face (2006) and Kill All Enemies (2011) highlight the vein of social and political criticism in his novels. Many of his novels have been dramatised for the theatre and television.

The most moving and enthusiastic, as well as the most common, emails and letters I’ve had from teenagers speak of the sheer relief and joy they’ve had at finding something that seems to actually reflect what’s going on in their own heads.

Pam Muñoz Ryan was born in Bakersfield CA in 1951. As a child she grew up hearing stories from her Mexican grandmother about life in Mexico before the family emigrated to the United States. These stories would later form the core of her novel, Esperanza Rising (2000), a fictionalized rendering of her family’s riches-to-rags experience. Through the eyes of Esperanza, readers see what life was like for migrant farm workers in the United States during the Great Depression. The importance of persistence, hope, and family support during trying times is a major theme in the novel. In The Dreamer (2010), a fictionalized biography of Pablo Neruda, she imagines the childhood of the world-renowned Chilean poet. The Dreamer was selected as an ALA, ILA, New York Public Library and YALSA Notable Book in the US and also won the Deutcher Jugendliteraturpreis.

Although Pam Muñoz Ryan has done much to celebrate and promote cultural understanding of the Latino community, she also writes convincingly across cultures and ethnicities. Echo (2015), a structurally innovative fairy tale/historical fiction hybrid, tells the stories of not only Mexican Americans in California during World War II, but also those of Japanese Americans in California, Irish orphans in Pennsylvania, and German children in Germany. All these characters possess a deep love of music and optimism despite difficult situations. This book also received several awards and was selected as an ALA and ILA Notable Book.

Pam Muñoz Ryan is the author of nearly 40 books, many of which have received prestigious book awards. Her graceful writing, which is consistently fluid and compelling, is characterized by vivid descriptions and apt figurative language. She writes in a wide array of genres and formats about a broad range of intriguing, masterfully drawn, racially and ethnically diverse characters and interesting, engaging, important topics. As she herself has noted: Readers need more than one story. They need many stories about many different families and cultures, traditions and holidays, histories and realities. Reading a breadth of stories nurtures the seeds of understanding. 

Pablo Bernasconi was born in Buenos Aires in 1973. A graphic designer, he graduated from Buenos Aires University, where he later was a professor for five years. He began his career as an illustrator at the newspaper Clarín in 1998, preparing covers for more than three hundred and fifty editions of the newspaper supplement. His illustrations have also been published in newspapers and magazines all around the world, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Saturday Evening Post, Telegraph and The Times. Besides his work with publishers and media, he collaborates with the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo (Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo) on their graphic projects. 

He is the creator of the text and illustrations of sixteen books and he has provided the illustrations to a further twenty books. Also, he has participated in several individual and group exhibitions in Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Bolivia, Italy, Slovenia, Colombia, UK and USA. His most relevant books for children are Mentiras y Moretones (Lies and brushes, 2016), El Brujo, el horrible y el libro rojo de los hechizos, (The wizard, the ugly and the book of shame, 2008), La verdadera explicación (The real explanation, 2012), El Diaro del Capitán Arsenio (The diary of Captain Arsenio, 2006) and Excesos y exageraciones (Excesses and exaggerations, 2010). He has received numerous prizes and his work has been included in several collections, including: “Illustration Now” TASCHEN 2014; the Society of Newspaper Design (SND) – Gold Medal in 2012, the Secretary of Public Education of Mexico (SEP) and he was selected to represent Argentina in the Bologna Book Fair.  His favourite technique is collage: I use collage because it is the most efficient way of transferring what I think, the metaphor that the collage contains is … direct and less noisy. 

Linda Wolfsgruber was born 1961 in Bruneck, South Tyrol and currently lives in Vienna. She attended art college in St. Ulrich in Gröden (Italy) and subsequently completed her training in typesetting in Munich (Germany) and in graphic design in Bruneck in 1980. After her professional training she studied at the Scuola del Libro in Urbino (Italy) from 1981 to 1983 and then started to work as a freelancing illustrator and graphic designer in Bruneck and Vienna. She has been teaching at the Scuola d’illusstrazione di Sarmede since 1996 and designs covers for books and CDs as well as making illustrations for newspapers and magazines such as Die Zeit. She uses mixed media methods including drawing (in charcoal or colour pencil), painting (in acrylic, tea or alternative materials), spraying paint on paper, cutting out, gluing and crafting miniatures. In Wie war das am Anfang? (How was it in the beginning? 2009), illustrations are assembled on several levels of transparent paper.

Other important works include Daisy ist ein Gänseblümchen (Daisy is a daisy – except when it is a girl’s name, 2009), Der Elefant und der Schmetterling (The elephant and the butterfly, 2013), Arche (Ark, 2013) and The Camel in the Sun (2014). She has travelled widely, including extended stays in Nairobi and Teheran, describing herself as: a collector of impressions. Her books have won several Austrian Children and Juvenile Book Awards, as well as several Children and Juvenile Book Awards of the City of Vienna.  

A pastry chef, an architect, a circus artist …  Carll Cneut, born in Roeselare in 1969, had big dreams when growing up in this small village on the Belgium-French border. He studied graphic design at the Sint-Lucas Institute in Ghent and, by accident, became an illustrator. While an unerring sense of colour was already present in his very early work, he soon proved to be a master at creating eccentric and extremely effective compositions. Later, his characters’ body language became an integral component of the story, as shown in O Monster eet me niet op (Monster don’t eat me, 2006). Sometimes he supports and emphasizes the rhythm of the story, but when the narrative calls for it, he goes against the story rhythm, creating an interesting and sometimes unsettling friction that forces the reader to reflect and contemplate the story more deeply. His ability to present universal emotions and themes is supported by a rich artistic palette and impressive narrative skills lies at the heart of his appeal. His often abstract style demands an attentive viewer, one with imagination and empathy, and in return stimulates the viewer’s creativity.

Belgian expressionist painters, as well as earlier Belgian artists, have been major influences on his artistic work. The stunning way fabric falls and folds in his drawings reminds the reader of Flemish Primitives such as Van Eyck, and Dulle Griet (Mad Meg, 2005) is a tribute to Pieter Brueghel the Elder. Of his own style he has commented: My approach has become finer and finer. These days I do most of my painting with very thin 00 brushes and I’m glad I can’t get hold of any thinner ones.”

Among his best-known works are Het geheim van de keel van de nachtegaal (The secret of the throat of the nightingale, 2008) by Peter Verhelst, De gouden kooi (The golden cage, 2014) by Anna Castagnoli and Heksenfee (Witchfairy, 2016) by Brigitte Minne. His books have been translated into more than thirty languages and have received many prestigious prizes, including being selected as a Finalist for the 2010 Hans Christian Andersen Award. 

Ciça Fittipaldi was born in 1952 in Sao Paolo. She studied classical ballet from the age of 13 and danced with a theatre company in São Paolo from 1966 to 1970. She began studies in Architecture and Fine Arts at the University of Brasilia and then completed an MA in Arts and Visual Culture at the National University of Goiás in 2005. Her interest in Brazilian indigenous culture and an extended stay with the indigenous Nambiquara tribe led to one of her first acclaimed books: Naro, o gambá (Naro, the polecat, 1988), part of the Morená series. A related interest in African tribal art is reflected in her illustrations of the first two books of Bichos da Africa (African animal tales, 2003) series as well as Os gêmeos do tambor (The twins of the drums, 2006) and Naninquiá, a moça bonita (Naninquiá, the pretty, 2013), which are retellings of traditional African stories and fables, all by the author Rogério Andrade Barbosa. Ciça Fittipaldi has received the Jabuti award and many of her books have been recognised as “Highly Recommended” by FNLIJ. Her work has been seen regularly at exhibitions in Brazil and abroad, including at the Bologna Children’s Book Fair and BIB.

Currently, Ciça Fittipaldi lives in Goiânia and teaches Drawing, Illustration and Book Design at the National University of Goiás. All of her works display her vast research, with methods learnt from anthropologists and her experience as a professor. For her illustrations that retell stories of African people, she collects as many iconographic materials as she can to immerse herself in the culture. About this work, she says: African sculptures were my formal basis, but the drawings are very choreographic. The absence of depth is replaced, in the composition, by a scenic arrangement of the elements and a body language from the characters that ties them to the dance universe. This work, that has transported me to such a rhythmic, musical and dancing world, allowed me to see and to make conscious and intentional relations between dance and drawing that worked in my gestures, in my persona and in my aesthetic action since childhood. 

Isabelle Arsenault was born in 1978 in Sept-Iles, Québec and currently lives in Montréal. After studies in Fine Arts and Graphic Design at the Université du Québec à Montréal, she specialized in illustration. She quickly gained recognition, receiving awards from major international illustration contests including Communication Arts and American Illustration and Applied Arts. Arsenault also won the Grand Prix for Illustration, Magazines du Québec, for six years running.

With 15 illustrated books to her name, Isabelle Arsenault has won many more awards and earned many distinctions, including being a three-time winner of the prestigious Canadian Governor General’s Literary Award for Le coeur de monsieur Gauguin (2004), Virginia Wolf (2012) and Jane, le renard & moi (2012). Virginia Wolf was also selected for the 2014 IBBY Honour List. Both Migrant (2011) and Jane, the Fox & Me (2013), the English translation of Jane, le renard & moi, were on The New York Times “Ten Best Illustrated Books” for their respective years.

Isabelle Arsenault’s flexibility as an illustrator of diverse publications ― from an alphabet book to a graphic novel to both fictional and non-fictional picture books ― has brought her a wide-ranging audience. She is greatly admired for her ability to tackle and humanize tough and complex subject matter with a distinctive and evocative style. Her illustrations, while immediately accessible, leave a lasting impression achieved only through their subtle undercurrents. She has that uncanny ability to tap into her childhood dreams and imaginings, as well as into the minds of her subjects. In an interview for The Walrus, she said: I create illustrations based on how each story inspires me. I like bringing the text to another level through its visuals. It’s a way to create images that can be appreciated by the eyes, but also the brain.

The pioneering Chinese illustrator Xiong Liang was born 1975 in Jiaxing, a small city in southern China. From a very young age he began his study of traditional Chinese ink and brush painting. He is completely self-taught and studied classic works of art and literature from China and the rest of the world. Brought up in a household of diverse religious backgrounds, his art incorporates a variety of cultures and visual styles, and has always been able to work within a wealth of unconventional, interesting “alternative” influences. His singular personality and upbringing have given him an unconventional imagination, and enabled him to create one captivating work of illustration after another.

His creations span a diverse variety of genres, including novels, children’s books, plays, modern ink brush painting and works of illustration for adults. His first illustrated children’s book was The Little Stone Lion in 2007. He has since illustrated a three-book collection of nursery rhymes and games, Children at Large (2013) and several books where nature, weather and the seasons play a powerful role, The Solar Terms (2015), Monster of the Monsoon (2015) and Wandering with the Wind (2016). Xiong Liang himself has said: Writing and illustration are the work of a lifetime, and a work of unsurpassed beauty! Both are always fresh, always brimming with imagination. They are never held back by convention, always ready to listen and to exchange ideas. They build understanding between all people, between all groups and cultures, and even between all the living creatures on our planet. 

Claudia Rueda was born in Colombia and currently lives in Bogotá. She attended law and art school and developed an interest in political cartoons and graphic books on environmental and political issues. She moved to San Francisco (USA) to learn about computer graphics and animation and by chance took a course in children’s books illustration, where her final class project developed into her first published picture book. Claudia Rueda’s work highlights the rich contrast between visual and verbal narratives. Her illustrations are spare, usually in coloured pencils, ink or with digital interventions. Her work has been described as “an ingenious graphic exploration of superb refinement”. She has written and illustrated over twenty picture books for children, which have been published in Colombia, Mexico, Spain and the USA. She has said: To write and illustrate for children is a challenge that makes us better as human beings.

Her main books include Formas (Shapes, 2009), No (2010), Huff & Puff (2012), Letras robadas by Triunfo Arciniegas (Stolen letters, 2013) and Here Comes the Easter Cat by Deborah Underwood (2014). Claudia Rueda’s work has received several awards including Italy’s Nati per Leggere, selected for the New York Society of Illustrators Original Art Show and been selected for the 2008 IBBY Honour List for Jugemos en el Bosque Mientras que le Lobo no Está (Let’s play in the forest when the wolf is not around, 2006). Her works have also featured as New York Times Bestseller and her most recent book, Bunny Slopes (2016), was included in the New York Public Library selection. She was also nominated for the Hans Christian Andersen Award in 2016. 

Andrea Petrlik Huseinović, illustrator, writer and editor, was born in 1966 in Zagreb. After finishing the School of Applied Arts in 1990, she graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb. She has illustrated many picture books and books for children as well as stories and poems in children’s magazines. She is a storyteller with a specific and recognizable style of writing and illustrating:  the protagonists of her stories are always those who are small, sometimes even invisible to the eyes of adults. Changing the perspective of the world and seeing it through the eyes of children is what makes her a profound storyteller of childhood.

In the last fifteen years, she has been awarded many prestigious awards and distinctions. Her illustrations for the classic story Pinocchio, Pinokio: neobični doživljaji jednog lutka (2001) were included in the 2002 IBBY Honour List. She was awarded the Grigor Vitez Award (Croatia, 2002), a BIB Plaque (2003), Grand Prix OBI 04 (Oita Biennial of Illustrations, Japan, 2004), literary/art award Sheep in a Box (Croatia, 2007) and the literary award Kiklop (Croatia, 2014). In 2012, her picture book Maleni was included among the “Top 10 Foreign Books” within the framework of the Russian Award Book of the Year – Children’s Choice 2012. Several of her books have been chosen for White Ravens selections.

I was created to breathe in the love I feel around me, and to send this love back to the world through my paintings and words. I am the happiest when a child or adult reads what I have written and sees what I have drawn, and feels this love, and then shares it with someone that will share this love, too.

Lilian Brøgger was born 1950 on Fanø, an island off the west coast of Jutland. She always knew she would draw and the light of sea and sky pervades her pictures. She studied at the Copenhagen School of Arts and Crafts (now the School of Design) and was the first to graduate as an illustrator. In her debut years in the 1970s, she worked in a consciously crude and awkward social-realist style. She contributed to the more poetic and fairytale-like imagery of the 1980s, and has held her own in the postmodern and deconstructionist revival that has characterized the 1990s and the turn of the century. Her curiosity has led her to work in almost all techniques and visual forms and her work spans a wide range of expression. This progress can be seen in Louis Jensen’s Hundrede firkantede historier 1-9 (Hundred square stories, 1-9, 1992-2014) where her illustrations developed from fine black and white lines to powerful colours to graphic and collage. She has described her method: I read the stories through a number of times over a period. At the same time, I do spontaneous sketches and notes, which are left in the manuscript. I repeat this. Perhaps ten times or more. In the end, I have a load of sketch ideas, which are the basis of the finished pictures. These I complete without sketching.

Lilian Brøgger has illustrated over a hundred books: her best-known works include Den fattige dreng fra Odense by Hjørdis Varmer (The poor boy from Odense, 2001), Anton elsker ymer (Anton loves junket, 2006), Goethe’s Den unge Werthers lidelser re-told by Oskar K. (The sorrows of young Werther, 2010) and Melodi og kuglerne (Melodi and the marbles, 2014) by Mari Bacquin and Robert Zola Christensen. She has won several awards in Denmark including the Ministry of Culture Award, the Association for Book Craft’s Awards as well as a BIB Golden Apple in 2005. She has been nominated for the Hans Christian Andersen Award eight times and was selected as a Finalist in 2006.     

Helmi el Touni was born in Beny-Sweif in 1934. He studied at the Faculty of Fine Arts of Helwan University in Cairo and obtained a degree in interior design in 1958. He began his career as an illustrator in the Egyptian children’s magazine Samir, creating the well-known children’s magazine character, Hamada, in the 1960s. His book, Matha Yureed Salem? (What does Salem want?), was published by UNICEF in the 1970s. He has since illustrated over 100 children’s books and as many features in children’s magazines throughout the Arab world. His illustrations have been inspired by ancient Egyptian art, local popular culture and contemporary images. He has received recognition in Egypt and abroad for his work. He received the Leipzig Book Fair Bronze Medal for Al-Amira Al-Mazlouma (The oppressed princess, 1982) and was first to win the Children’s Book Prize from the Cairo Book Fair for the illustrations of Kan Zaman (Once upon a time, 1998). He won the first prize from the Suzanne Mubarak Prize for Children’s Literature for the illustrations of Ghazala Wa Sayyad (A gazelle and a hunter) in 1991 and won the same prize in 2001 for Helal Al-Qods Al-Bassam (The smiling crescent of Jerusalem). He is illustrator of Agmal Al-Hekayat Al-Sha’abeyya (The most beautiful folk tales), which received the Bologna Ragazzi New Horizon’s Award 2002. Helmi El-Touni has worked in several fields related to the visual arts: painting, graphic design, publishing and furniture design. In 2014 the American University in Cairo held an exhibition titled “El-Touni: A Design Retrospective” celebrating his lifetime achievements. 

François Place was born 1957 in Ezanville. He studied at L’École des arts et industries graphiques Estienne, a school of art design, then worked as an illustrator for advertisement companies before moving to illustrating children’s books. In 1983, he illustrated the novels of La Comtesse de Ségur for children. In 1986 he began illustrating non-fiction books such as Le Livre de la découverte du monde (The book of the discovery of the world) by Bernard Planche. He began to illustrate his own books and in 1992 created Les Derniers géants (The last giants). The book was a huge success, winning several prizes and was included in the 1994 IBBY Honour List. It was widely translated and changed the way book professionals consider illustrated books for children and young adults. The three volumes of L’Atlas des géographes d’Orbae (A voyage of discovery), an atlas of 26 imaginary countries based on the letters of the alphabet, published between 1996 and 2000, tackle the frontier between fiction and non-fiction books. In 2010, he published his first novel, La Douane volante. His work speaks of travels to faraway lands, discoveries and encounters.

His preferred media are lead, ink, watercolour and aquarelle to create often very detailed scenes. Of his style he has said: The thing with drawing is to find a gesture that is consistent everywhere. Each separate element and the whole must have the same quality, the same rhythm, the same freedom. That is why I rework so often. His other works include Le vieux fou de dessin (The old man mad about drawing: a tale of Hokusai, 2002), Le roi des trois orients (The king of three orients, 2006) and Le secret d’Orbae (The secret of Orbae, 2012). He has also illustrated the works of other authors, including Michael Morpurgo, Erik L’Homme and Timothée de Fombelle. François Place has been nominated for the Hans Christian Andersen Award several times and was a Finalist in 2014. 

Nikolaus Heidelbach was born 1955 in Lahnstein. He now lives in Cologne as a freelance author and illustrator and is considered one of the most recognized, yet unconventional, artists in Germany. His father was a realist painter and he came into contact with art at an early age. However, he never attended art school, rather he studied German philology, art history, and theatre in Cologne and Berlin. In 1980 he published his first book for adults, Bilderbogen (Pictorial broadsheet). His first picture book Das Elefantentreffen oder 5 dicke Angeber (The meeting of the elephants or 5 fat braggarts) appeared in 1982. Since then he has published over 50 illustrated books for children and adults. His best known works include Wenn ich gross bin, werde ich Seehund (When I grow up, I’m going to be a seal, 2011), which was selected for the 2014 IBBY Honour List and the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis. In addition to picture books with his own texts, he has illustrated children’s books such as Der neue Pinocchio (The new Pinocchio, 1988) by Christine Nöstlinger), poems by Josef Guggenmos, stories and fairy tales by the Grimm Brothers and Hans Christian Andersen and has drawn about 300 cover illustrations. His books have been awarded numerous prizes, and in 2000 he received the Sonderpreis der Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis for his complete work.

His work evades the classical categories and he has a clear preference for addressing themes that are often considered taboo for children’s and youth literature: sexuality or death, aggression, loneliness or fear. In his work he succeeds in an unforgettable way in depicting children’s feelings and sensibilities and he has developed his own visual language and inimitable style, which offers children complex, subtle imagery – pictures that continue the narrative where the text ends, interpreting it, and expanding on it by adding new perspectives. He has said: That would be something new to me – a picture that a child gives up on.

Christos Dimos grew up in a small village close to Ioannina. From a young age he liked to sketch and draw. Later on, this love for sketching took him to Athens, where he studied illustration, drawing, caricature and comic at Ornerakis School of Applied Arts and was introduced to animation design. For ten years he worked as an animator in advertising and video productions in Athens and in London. He returned to Greece in 1997 to devote himself to illustration and has since illustrated 118 books.

The first book that he both wrote and illustrated, Ntomatas-Patatias  (Mr Tomato-Potato), was published in 2005 and was also dramatized for schools. His best known books include Mia fora ki enan kero itan tris magi sofi ke vasiliades (Once upon a time there were three magicians and kings, 2006) by G. Myrat, which was shortlisted for the Greek National Awards. The most recent titles are I magiki kolokitha (The magic pumpkin, 2017) by A. Zamanopoulos and O Agisilaos sti dimotiki vivliothili (Agesilaus in the library, 2017) by J. Diakomanolis. His work has featured in many exhibitions nationally and internationally and has been shown in many exhibitions, including the BIB.

Christos Dimos enjoys mixing watercolours, ecoline colours, gouaches and colour pencils. He also uses outline with ink to create a sketch effect. He is a meticulous researcher of the work of European book illustrators, particularly from the 1930s, when artists used strong, black contours and painstakingly took care of every little detail. This has influenced the detailing in his pictures and the black lines that “build” the figures without imprisoning movement. Christos also shares his passion for drawing and illustration with children through teaching. He has said: Through my work, I hope that my illustrations feed and free children’s imagination while also develop their aesthetics, learn about themselves and the world around them.

I am always very interested in all the images that are
produced by … people who do not know the rules to be followed, who do not know exactly how things have to be done … they “invent” a way to do the things that … is new and obliges us to take an unexpected mental journey and suggests to us also other ways.

Guido Scarabottolo was born in Sesto San Giovanni in 1947. He is an architect as well as illustrator and graphic designer. He has been illustrating book covers for years and is also an art director. His worldview and his ability to put reality and imagination on paper in a cultured, refined and minimalist way have made him recognized around the world. He has created fantastic worlds where animals that come from different geographical places live with an extraordinary serenity. For young children he has invented characters and scenarios that emphasize subtle irony and humour. He offers children the opportunity of awe and wonder and he draws to give voice to their emotions.

He has created books that address the relationships between siblings and the relationships between children and adults through the interlacing of reality and fantasy. Several of these books have been written by Giovanna Zoboli: Di note sulla strada di casa (Nighttime questions on the way home, 2005), Due scimmie in cucina (Two monkeys in a kitchen, 2006) and Cose che non vedo dalla mia finestra  (Things I can’t see from my window, 2012). Together they have created PIPPO Piccolo Pinacoteca. Portatile- The Small Portable Picture Gallery, a project that aims to familiarize children and teens with the world of art, an opportunity to address beauty as a necessary part of the life of a child, both ethically and aesthetically. 

Seizo Tashima (born 1940 in Osaka) has been an illustrator of picture books since the 1960s, a golden age of Japanese picture books, and even at the age of 76 continues to produce powerful, passionate, and ceaselessly innovative works.  His first picture book was published in 1965, the folk tale Furuyanomori  (Leaky roof of the old house) by Teiji Seta. He has since published some 150 picture books of tremendous variety, some funny, others serious, stories of war, as well as folktales and books for babies.  Running through all his works there is a consistent spirit: the wellspring of his art is the vigor and vitality of life and slow-burning anger at war, destruction of the environment and discrimination as in the story Boku no koe ga kikoemasu ka (Can you hear my voice? 2012).

The bold and primitive-looking technique of his 1967 work Chikara Taro (Strongman Taro), done in opaque earth paints, set the style for his depictions of character and life force through the various eras of his career.  He has also branched out to lithographs. Invariably it is audacious and diverse page compositions that rivet the reader and drive the stories forward. He received international recognition from an early stage in his career, receiving a BIB Golden Apple in 1969 for Chikara Taro, but he has been considered somewhat of an outsider in Japan because of his rebellious stance and constantly innovative endeavours as an artist. Nonetheless he has had a definite influence on younger picture book artists not only in Japan but other parts of the world. Seizo Tashima continues to shift techniques and forms of expression with each new project he undertakes, his work continuously challenges the boundaries between picture books and fine art.  In 2009 he created a “walk-in picture book” that opened in an abandoned school in the Niigata prefecture.

Children grow up to be adults. When they grow up and look back at the books they used to love, I don’t want them to be disappointed because the stories were no more than cheap, juvenile devices. There is no meaning in picture books unless children can read them again as adults and be impressed with them as great works of art. Picture books ought to be art.

Gundega Muzikante is a Latvian artist and book illustrator. She has been contributing to graphic art exhibitions and illustrating children’s books for 30 years. Born in Riga in 1964, she graduated from the Department of Ceramics of the Riga School of Applied Arts and the Department of Graphic Art of the Latvian Academy of Art, obtaining her Master’s degree in 2009. She made her debut as an exhibiting artist while still a student, showing at group exhibitions in Latvia, Germany, Finland and Sweden. In 1990 that she won her first award ‒ the Indriķis Zeberiņš prize ‒ as a children’s book illustrator. Since then, Muzikante has been illustrating or designing at least one book every year. She has worked for children’s periodicals, created the design of textbooks and has made a successful debut in animation.

She has received a number of prizes, including The Most Beautiful Book of the Year: in 1995 for the book Kā Ruksītis ciemos gāja (How the piglet went visiting); in 1997 for the book Eža kažociņš (Hedgehog's coat); in 1998 for the book Lieldienas un Mārtiņi (Easter and St. Martin's Day) and in 2000 for the book Kaziņa par līgavu (Goat bride). In 1992 she won the Indulis Zeberiņš prize for the book Strupastīša talcinieki (The helpers of the short-tail) and in 2002 she was voted Illustrator of the Year. In 2014 she won the Annual Baltic Sea Region Jānis Baltvilks International Prize in Children’s Literature and Book Art. Grāmata Gundegai (A book for Gundega, 2015) by Pēters Brūveris, featuring her illustrations, was included in the IBBY Honour List 2016.

Gundega Muzikante has created illustrations to very diverse texts, from light and rhythmic poems to serious philosophical narratives. She emphasises that: While the text is an important conceptual impulse behind the visual narrative, nevertheless it is not interesting to depict things that have already been written. A text is a personality and my mission and task is understanding it.

Books should be such that one wouldn’t want to throw them in the corner after opening the first page. Such that one could turn the pages for a long while, look at the drawings without reading the text, or, quite the opposite, read without paying attention to the illustrations. Such that one could start reading right from the middle or actually try reading from the end. Such that there would be points in them at which one wants to pause and think for a while and, certainly, not rush.

Kęstutis Kasparavičius, born in Sukstadvaris in 1954, is a writer and illustrator. He studied graphic design at the Academy of Art in Vilnius. He has illustrated 58 books, the first appearing in 1984. He has illustrated many books of classical children’s literature – by Hans Christian Andersen, Carlo Collodi, E.T.A. Hoffmann, A. Bürger, Edward Lear and Oskar Milosz. He has also illustrated children books by contemporary Lithuanian and international writers and, in the past few years, his own texts. These include classic picture books, such as Braškių diena (Strawberry day, 2006), Mažoji žiema (The little winter, 2010), which was included in the 2012 IBBY Honour List, Apie daiktus (About things, 2013), Apie gyvūnus (About animals, 2014) and Kaimynė už kampo (The neighbour around the corner, 2016).

Kęstutis Kasparavičius portrays the appearance, movements and facial expressions of animals in a lively and true-to-life manner. The artist humanizes not only animals, but other objects of the environment as well. In his works, a clear form, readily perceived by the child, is well matched with artistry, flight of fancy and play of nonsense. His style is easily recognizable: his light drawings with dabs of intense watercolour are always uplifting.

In 1993 he received the Illustrator of the Year Award at the Bologna Children’s Book Fair and in 2003 was awarded the Bologna Illustrators’ Exhibition Award for Excellence. He has been nominated for the Hans Christian Andersen Award in 2008 and 2010.

Thé Tjong-Khing was born in 1933 in Purworedjo (Java, Indonesia) to a Chinese-Indonesian family. He attended the arts institute in Bandung and moved to the Netherlands to continue his studies in 1956. In the Netherlands he started to work at Toonder Studio as a draftsman, where he drew comic strips. He also contributed to various children’s magazines. In 1970 he illustrated his first children’s book, Total loss, weet je wel (Total loss, you know) written by Miep Diekmann. Since then, he has been a sought-after illustrator of children’s books. To the question: "Do you still find it a challenge and where do you get your ideas from?" he says: It depends a lot on the story you're illustrating, of course. Sometimes you can only draw what's there, which isn't too inspiring. Some texts can be far more suggestive. If I have to draw a child, for instance, then I use pictures of what I see around me, but many early memories as well. I've retained all of them. It's like this, when you're an actor you've only got one part, but as an illustrator you actually direct all of the parts. That's very appealing.

He has worked with many well-known Dutch children’s book authors such as Guus Kuijer, Els Pelgrom, Sylvia Vanden Heede and Dolf Verroen. Between 1967 and 1968 he drew the science-fiction strip Iris, with Lo Hartog writing the texts. They also created the cartoon strip Arman and Ilva for various provincial newspapers. Apart from working as a cartoonist and book illustrator, he also taught at the Rietveld Academy. He has illustrated some 150 children's books, including Het woordenboek van Vos en Haas (The dictionary of fox and hare, 2002) by Silvia Vanden Heede, which was included in the 2004 IBBY Honour List. He was nominated for the Hans Christian Andersen Award in 2008. 

Iwona Chmielewska (born 1960 in Pabianice) studied at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, graduating from the Printmaking Department in 1984. At the beginning of her career, she illustrated children’s classics such as The Secret Garden be Frances Hodges Burnett and Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery, as well as Polish poetry. The turning point in her career came in 2003, when her books were published in South Korea. After publishing over 20 books, she was well known in Asia but hardly known in Poland. In 2011, Blumka’s Tagebuch (Blumka’s diary), originally published in Germany, was published in Poland as Pamiętnik Blumki. The book was loved by both readers and critics and she began to enjoy wide recognition in her own country. She had won the BIB Golden Apple in 2007 for the book Thinking ABC (2006) a book for Korean children learning the English alphabet. She won the Bologna Ragazzi Award twice for Korean books, in 2011 for A House of the Mind: Maum by Kim Hee-KyungeHH and in 2013 for Eyes. Thus far, she has published over 40 books, cooperating with authors and publishing houses in Poland and abroad. Her style has been described as subtle and melancholic. She often uses pencils, crayons; she cuts out pieces from old notebooks and journals and embroiders with one colour. Her drawings are clear, sometimes slightly naïve, realistic but poetic, always neat and studious. She leaves a lot of empty space in her illustrations and often uses blue, which reflects the spiritual and melancholic character of many of the books she has illustrated.

Igor Oleynikov (born 1953 in Lyubertsy near Moscow) is a painter and illustrator. He began drawing as a child but studied at the Institute of Chemical Engineering; after six years of study he worked for three years as an engineer. In 1979 he began working as an artist at the animation studio, Soyuzmultfilm and later at the Christmas Film Studios. In 1986 he began working as an illustrator for children’s periodicals and on book projects. He is very prolific and his illustrations are very dynamic with unusual characters, often rendered like cinema shots. He prefers to paint with gouache and work with textures.

He has illustrated more than 80 books for children and young adults, including many classic fairy tales and works of children’s literature. Among these, Ballada o malen’kom buksire (The ballad of a little tugboat, 2011) by Joseph Brodsky was included in the 2012 IBBY Honour List. Other important titles include Mahalia Mouse goes to College (2007) by John Lithgow and Fairy Tales (2016) by Alexander Pushkin. In addition to numerous exhibitions in Russia, he has exhibited at the Bologna Children’s Book Fair in 2004 and 2009 and at the BIB in 2003 and 2005.

I use everything that comes to hand: broom, rags … as long as the idea is implemented expressively. For me the biggest compliment of the reader could be a surprised shout “Ah!” when he opens a book with my illustrations.

Peter Škerl was born 1973 in Ljubljana. He graduated in Illustration and Visual Communication Design at the Academy of Fine Arts, University of Ljubljana. His artistic expression soon focused on illustration for children and he has since illustrated about 40 children's books (fiction and non-fiction) as well as many articles in Slovenian children's magazines. His painting methods are complex: each phase of painting is executed meticulously down to the last detail. Each character is a separate “model” with unambiguous character traits and a clear role that they play throughout the story. Scenery is detailed as well as unusual and dramatic, made extremely convincing, even spectacular, by his skillful use of light and shadow. In the final illustrations, the heroes, events and settings come together in powerful compositions, both in terms of image and narrative. However, while everything is designed, composed and thoroughly directed, the images turn out effortless and our experience of the illustrations does not reflect their construction. The illustrations appear soft and light, coincidental and natural.

His illustrations have been selected for exhibitions in Italy (2001), Croatia (2006) and Japan (2009). He has received several awards in Slovenia including the Himko SmrekarSpecial Distinction for a Young Artist (2002), the Best Designed Book Award at the Ljubljana Book Fair (2007) and the Original Slovenian Picture Book Award (2008). His illustrations for Mocvirniki (Marshlanders, 2012) by Barbara Simoniti are considered classic; the book was selected for the Himko SmrekarAward (2012) and the LevstikAward (2013) as well as for the 2013 White Ravens and the 2014 IBBY Honour List.

I’m very thorough in my work. I never know exactly what will come out, but I try to come as close as possible to my original idea. I pay a lot of attention to colour details that help narrate the story. At the beginning, I’m not interested in the surface, but in the layers beneath it. Only when the foundations have set does it make sense to start paying attention to detail. I have always been drawn to literary classics precisely because of their multiple layers of meaning.

Elena Odriozola was born in San Sebastián in 1967 and studied Art and Decoration. After working in an advertising agency for eight years, in 1997 she began working as a full-time illustrator. Since then she has illustrated over 100 books as well as posters and book covers, mainly published in Spain but also in France, the United Kingdom, Mexico and Taiwan.

Her books have been published in several Spanish and foreign languages and her work has been recognised with numerous awards. Her illustrations were selected at the BIB in 2003, 2013 and 2015 and she has won the Basque Award for Illustration twice: once in 2009 for her work in the book Aplastamiento de las gotas (The smashing of the raindrops, 2008) by Julio Cortázar and again in 2013 for Tropecista (Tumbler, 2012) by Jorge Gonzalvo. She was selected for the Bologna Book Fair exhibition in 2010 and in the same year won the CJ Picture Book Award in the New Publications category for the book Oda a una estrella (Ode to a star, 2009) by Pablo Neruda and she was invited to the International Fair of Illustrations for Children in Sarmede, Italy in 2010, to which she returned in 2012. Her work has been selected for the IBBY Honour List twice: in 2006 for Atxiki sekretua (Keep the secret, 2004) by Patxi Zubizarreta and in 2014 for Eguberria (Christmas, 2012) by Juan Kruz Igerabide. She won the Junceda International Award 2014 for her original work for Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, which also earned her the BIB Golden Apple Award in 2015. In the same year she won the National Award for Illustration.

Elena Odriozola’s illustrations offer a personal interpretation of each literary work. With delicate, intimate lines her drawing is subtle, refined and efficient, both technically and conceptually. She has said: They say my illustrations are “lovely”. The aesthetic is very important to me, but it must always be accompanied by the content (and not hiding behind the absence of it). Without the illustrator’s interpretation, beauty, which is so important to me, is pure virtuosity.

Eva Lindström, born 1952 in Västerås, studied painting at the Konstfack (University College of Arts, Crafts and Design) in Stockholm. She drew illustrations for the children’s magazine KP and began to write and illustrate her own books. Her first book, Kattmössan (The cat hat, 1988) drew heavily on the influence of comics using strong colours and bold black outlines. She developed a distinctive humorous style both in text and pictures, telling the story from the child’s perspective, with the eyes and voice of the child. Her prose is spare and laconic with a special blend of darkness and humour. For her illustrations she blends watercolour, gouache and pencil in a distinctive way. Her characters - human or animal - are drawn in a somewhat “straggly” style against backgrounds with a saturated, rich colour palette. Her best-known works include Min vän Lage (My friend Lage, 2001), Vilma och Mona spanar och smyger (Vilma and Mona sneak and spy, 2004), which was included in the 2006 IBBY Honour List, Jag rymmer! (I’m running away!, 2006), I skogen (In the woods, 2008) and Olli och Mo (Olli and Mo, 2012). Eva Lindström has won several awards in Sweden including the Snöbollen in 2012 for best picture book of the year for Apan och jag (Monkey and me, 2011). In 2013 she was awarded the most prestigious national book award, the August Prize for her illustrations to Snöret, fågeln och jag (The string, the bird and me, 2013) by Ellen Karlsson. She has been nominated for the August Prize twelve times in all, a unique achievement. She has been nominated for the Hans Christian Andersen Award several times and was a Finalist in 2014.

All of the pictures are in my head while writing. The colours, the personalities, the landscapes: everything is there, pointing out a possible way to tell a specific story. And the stories often circle around subjects, such as lost things, lost people, friendship and not friendship, longing ... I really try to tell stories about other things too, but I seldom succeed.

Albertine was born in 1967 in Dardagny, near Geneva. She studied at the École des arts décoratifs and the École supérieure d’art visuel in Geneva.  She obtained her diploma in 1990 and opened a screen-printing workshop in the same year. She became a press illustrator a year later and in 1996 she married the writer Germano Zullo. Their many joint children’s publications have received several awards, including: BIB Golden Apple in 1999 for Marta et la bicyclette (Marta and the bicycle); Prix Suisse Jeunesse et Médias in 2009; Prix Sorcières in 2011 and New York Times Book Review Best Illustrated Book in 2012. Her drawings are lively and full of humour using a very fine line and often bright and cheerful colours. Her natural spontaneity appears throughout her works, but with a sense of detail, an infinite precision, a relevance, as well as a sense of humour. She gives every image different layers, which, in turn, offer the reader several levels of interpretation. She has exhibited her drawings, screen prints, lithographic works, wood engravings, objects and notebooks in Geneva, Paris, Rome, Valencia and Tokyo. Among her most important books for children are the titles: La rumeur de Venise (The Venice rumour, 2009), which was selected for the 2010 IBBY Honour List, Les Oiseaux (Little bird, 2011), Les Gratte-Ciel (Sky high, 2011) and Ligne 135 (Line 135, 2012). Her book, Mon tout petit (My little one, 2015), an endless embrace between mother and child that unwinds in a flipbook, was selected for the 2016 IBBY Honour List, it won the 2016 Bologna Ragazzi Award for Fiction and won the Green Island Award at the Nami Island Concours in 2017.

It is thought that drawing is something simple, random, although it entails reflection, perspective, ten drafts, three attempts, two retouches ... It is back-breaking, twelve hours a day … a total commitment of body and consciousness.

Born in İstanbul in 1985, Sedat Girgin graduated from Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University, Department of Industrial Design. He has illustrated more than 80 books for many publishing houses and has worked as a freelance illustrator for several magazines and digital agencies. His first published children’s book was Ayi Yavrusunun Uykusu Nereye Kaçti? (Where did the baby bear lose his sleep? 2006). In 2007, his illustrated book, Karıncanın Kardeşi (Ant’s brother) received the third prize at Tudem’s Book-Making Competition and was translated into German. His book Tembel Balık Sefa (Sefa, the lazy fish) by Tilih Kozikoğlu was selected for the 2015 White Ravens. Sedat Girgin’s style is mostly linear, using soft colouring tones: washed watercolours over linear figures are typical of his work. Most of his figures have a shaded undertone that invites individual interpretations. In many of his works, one figure hides another in a very subtle shade; the distorted realism that is a typical in his works often tends to surrealism.

He has participated in many national and international group exhibitions, organized workshops, attended seminars and been invited to join various selection committees. He opened his first solo exhibition Hayretler Sirki (Circus of Wonders) in 2013. His distinctive illustrations have been exhibited at BIB.

I like being free in my drawings. My goal is to have a distinctive style and to reflect myself with my work. I like altering the figures; distorting, lengthening or shortening arms, fattening or thinning down. I really like going beyond the existent. I sometimes exaggerate, sometimes not, depending on how I feel.  

Jane Ray was born 1960 in London. She studied art and design at Middlesex University. She specialised in ceramics for her degree course, but she had always wanted to be a book illustrator. After graduation, she began her career by illustrating greeting cards and book jackets. A Balloon for Grandad (1989), written by Nigel Gray, was her first picture book and was shortlisted for the Mother Goose Award. Since then she has illustrated over sixty books for children, including many folk tales, myths, legends and Bible stories. The Story of Creation, with words that were adapted from the Bible, won a Smarties Award in 1992. She has illustrated two books with adult texts for the prestigious Folio Society, Myths and Legends of the Near East (2003)
and Celtic Myths and Legends (2006), and has illustrated original picture book texts from the award-winning novelist Jeanette Winterson, and the UK Poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy. Beginning in 2002 with Can You Catch a Mermaid, she has written and illustrated several of her own stories as picture books.

Jane Ray draws inspiration from the art and architecture of other times and places: her illustration of the traditional song The Twelve Days of Christmas (2011) was inspired by a visit to Bruges in Belgium; Venice was the starting point for both the story and illustrations of Heartsong (2015), written with Kevin Crossley Holland. Her books have been shortlisted for several prizes, six of them for the Kate Greenaway Award: The Story of Christmas (1994), The Happy Prince (1994), Noah’s Ark (1995), Fairy Tales (2000), Jinnie Ghost (2005) and The Lost Happy Endings (2008).

To enable a child to see themselves in a book, to see an aspect of their story being told, is a powerful and liberating gift. And to get those children writing and illustrating, becoming the authors and illustrators of tomorrow, is the way forward. 

In order to tell a story and to tell it effectively … I’ve got to develop my craftsmanship. I’ve got to develop my sense of color and mood, and all those things. But why? Why, because I’m trying to tell a story that will convince the reader and pull the reader in.


Jerry Pinkney was born in 1939 in Philadelphia. As a child, he struggled to read but compensated for this challenge with his ability to draw. He sustained this passion throughout elementary and secondary school and was awarded a scholarship to study Graphic Design at the Philadelphia Museum College of Art. He later settled in Boston and enjoyed success as a commercial artist. In 1964, he illustrated his first children’s book called The Adventures of Spider, and went on to illustrate more than one hundred children’s books over the course of fifty-three years. His body of work encompasses fairy tales, folktales, fables, legends, historical and contemporary fiction, informational books, biographies, and poetry. Though he focuses on capturing and conveying the African-American experience, he has embraced the opportunity to illustrate works that represent a variety of other cultures. His best known works include The Lion and the Mouse (2009), based on the Aesop fable, which won the Caldecott Medal in 2010. Other titles include Pretend You’re a Cat (1990), Minty: A Story of Young Harriet Tubman (1996) by Alan Shroeder, which received the Coretta Scott King Award, and The Nightingale (2002) by Hans Christian Andersen. His illustrations for The Ugly Duckling by Hans Christian Andersen were selected for the 2002 IBBY Honour List.

Each book he illustrates is filled with superbly drawn, watercolour masterpieces, all intricately detailed and finely textured. They vividly portray the emotions and nuances of human and animal characters in a ways that speak directly to the minds and hearts of children. His books have received every major award and accolade for children’s books in the United States and he has been honoured with several lifetime achievement awards for his substantial and significant contributions to children’s literature. He was nominated for the Hans Christian Andersen Award in 1998 and the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award in 2011.