IBBY (International Board on Books for Young People) has announced the 2008 winners of the
2008 Hans Christian Andersen Awards.
In awarding the 2008 Hans Christian Andersen Medal for Writing to Jürg Schubiger, the jury has recognized a very powerful narrator who fascinates the reader with playful reflection upon the creative process. His short philosophical stories are told through believable metaphors from a child's perspective and charm the reader. Humanity and universality are the most important characteristics of his works
The 2008 Hans Christian Andersen Medal for Illustration recognizes Roberto Innocenti as a masterful illustrator who powerfully depicts various genres. His historical stories of war, specifically the holocaust, invite young people to speculate about the serious problems of the world. He also portrays classic children's literature from a completely different point of view. His narrative power of the images is overwhelming.
Jürg Schubiger is from Switzerland. Roberto Innocenti is from Italy.
More about Jürg Schubiger:
Jürg Schubiger was born in Zurich in 1936 and grew up in Winterthur, Switzerland. After an apprenticeship as a cardboard cutter, he worked as a gardener and lumberjack, among other jobs, in South Africa, Corsica and southern Spain. Afterwards he worked as an advertising copywriter in Zurich before studying German, psychology and philosophy at the University of Zurich in the 1960s. Between 1969 and 1979 he was active as an editor and publisher while training as a therapist.
Although Schubiger began writing in the 1970s, he did not reach a wide readership until the publication in 1996 of his story collection "Als die Welt noch jung war". Since then he has published a number of other successful children's books.
Today Schubiger lives and works in Zurich as a freelance writer and psychotherapist.
More about
Roberto Innocenti:
Roberto Innocenti was born near Florence in 1940 and first came into contact with the world of art at the age of eleven. He began experimenting with colours and paper while working as an assistant in a specialist shop and says that, although he was never able to attend art school, from this point on he was an artist with every fibre of his being. In the late 1950's Innocenti went to Rome to work in a film animation studio, as an illustrator for a magazine and as a designer of posters. At the age of 43 he dedicated himself solely to the illustration of children's books and illustrated the French version of the Cinderella fairytale, Charles Perrault's »Cendrillon« (1983; Eng. »Cinderella«, 1983). This was the starting point of an international career which continued to set standards for the illustration of classic literature. Amongst others Innocenti has illustrated the works of E.T.A Hoffmann, Charles Dickens, Oscar Wilde and Christophe Gallaz. The »New York Times« named him »one of the greatest illustrators of children's books in the world«.
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