Shaun Tan nabs Lindgren Award
Shaun Tan’s mantelpiece must be getting crowded: In addition to the Oscar he picked up last month for the film version of The Lost Thing, he has now won this year’s Astrid Lindgren Award. Created to memorialize the author of Pippi Longstocking, the award goes each year to a creator or creators whose body of work “must uphold the highest artistic quality and evoke the deeply humanistic spirit that Astrid Lindgren treasured.”
The jury called Tan “a masterly visual storyteller, pointing the way ahead to new possibilities for picture books,” and one juror commented,
… I often like to think of words and images as opposite points on a battery, creating a potential voltage through a ‘gap’ between telling and showing. It requires the reader’s imagination to complete the circuit …
The prize is a cash prize of 5 million kroner, and previous recipients include Maurice Sendak and Philip Pullman.
The awards site includes a recording of the phone call in which Tan learned he was the winner, which is a nice touch.
Filed under: Uncategorized

About Brigid Alverson
Brigid Alverson, the editor of the Good Comics for Kids blog, has been reading comics since she was 4. She has an MFA in printmaking and has worked as a book editor and a newspaper reporter; now she is assistant to the mayor of Melrose, Massachusetts. In addition to editing GC4K, she writes about comics and graphic novels at MangaBlog, SLJTeen, Publishers Weekly Comics World, Comic Book Resources, MTV Geek, and Good E-Reader.com. Brigid is married to a physicist and has two daughters in college, which is why she writes so much. She was a judge for the 2012 Eisner Awards.
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT
SLJ Blog Network
Cover Encore: THE SHIP IN THE WINDOW
Ellen Myrick Publisher Preview: Spring 2024 – Inhabit Media, Kube Publishing, and Lantana (Part Three)
November 2023 Election Hot Take: It was a good night for libraries, a bad night for censorship
Post-It Reviews: Six quick reviews of recent graphic novels
ADVERTISEMENT