Sweden’s Astrid Lindgren Award is one of the highest awards for books for young people. It was awarded to the French fairytale master, Jean-Claude Mourlevat.
Image: C. Heliegallimard/Creative Commons
Advertisement
One of the most prestigious prizes for literature aimed at children and young people was awarded on March 30 in an online ceremony in Stockholm. This year’s big winner of the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award was French author Jean-Claude Mourlevat, who learned of his win shortly before an online ceremony broadcast from Stockholm.
Created in 2002 by the Swedish government, the prize is named after Swedish author Astrid Lindgren, creator of the popular free-spirited fiction character Pippi Longstocking. Lindgren died in 2002 at age 94 but left her mark on children’s literature in Sweden and beyond.
Now you can visit Astrid Lindgren's Stockholm home
It was in her Stockholm apartment that Astrid Lindgren invented "Pippi Longstocking." Her home hasn't been touched since her death in 2002, but now the children author's residence is opening as a museum.
Image: Ullstein Buchverlage GmbH
Pippi: The strongest girl in the world
The eccentric little girl with the freckles and red braids, who lives in Villa Villekulla, was Astrid Lindgren's favorite character. Pippi Longstocking dared to talk back, climb walls and wear unusual clothes. In Lindgren's children's book, Pippi is the strongest girl in the world and, since she doesn't have parents, she's allowed to do whatever she wants.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
A kids' book that went around the world
"Pippi Longstocking" was Astrid Lindgren's first book, but it garnered her global fame. Actually, Lindgren (1907-2002) never planned on becoming a writer. She invented the crazy stories about the parentless redhead in 1941 when her own daughter was home sick. In 1944, she wrote them down. Since then, the story has been translated into some 50 languages.
Image: Getty Images
Family life in the city
Astrid Lindgren lived for over 60 years in the Vasa quarter of Stockholm at the address Dalagatan 46. That was the house she was born in, which she was able to purchase in 1965 with the money she won with the Swedish national literature prize. Lindgren had two children, Lasse and Karin, and incorporated many of their ideas in her books.
Image: Ullstein Buchverlage GmbH/K. Johansen
Kid tested and approved
Astrid Lindgren read all of her stories to her daughter Karin (left) first before she got them published. From Bill Bergson to Karlsson-on-the-Roof, all of her characters were appealing to children - if not, Lindgren's own kids would veto them.
Image: Ullstein Buchverlage GmbH
Idyllic Swedish villages
Many of Astrid Lindgren's novels have been turned into successful movies as well. Millions of children all over the world have sat in front of the TV and dreamed of adventurous worlds like the one in "The Six Bullerby Children." The town in the story is based on Sevedstorp, the village where Lindgren's father grew up. It's located just a few kilometers from her hometown, Vimmerby.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Advocate for children
In 1978, Astrid Lindgren became the first children's author to win the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade. In her speech at the award ceremony in Frankfurt, she made an appeal for children's rights - an issue she was passionate about her whole life.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/B. Ericson
Political diaries
Astrid Lindgren wasn't only interested in children's tales, but also in politics. She started writing a diary on September 1, 1939, the day the Nazis invaded Poland and World War II began. She noted that it was unfortunate that no one had shot Hitler. Her war-time diary was published as a book just this year.
Image: Ullstein Buchverlage GmbH
7 images1 | 7
For the 2021 award, worth 5 million Swedish kroner (574,000 dollars, 489,719 euros), Mourlevat beat 250 candidates from 68 countries. "I can’t believe it," he repeated, sounding both shocked and elated when he learned of his win. "It’s such a great surprise that I can’t say anything interesting" he uttered.
Born in 1952 in the French village of Ambert, Mourlevat has written over 30 books translated into 20 languages for teens and children alike. He began his professional life as a German teacher, but switched to work as an actor, director and clown. It was his theatrical path that led him to discover his passion for writing fairytales, fables and fantasy stories.
"Jean-Claude Mourlevat is a brilliant renewer of fairy tale traditions, open to both hardship and beauty" wrote the jury. "Time and space are suspended in his fictional worlds, and eternal themes of love and longing, vulnerability and war are portrayed in precise and dreamlike prose. Mourlevat’s ever-surprising work pins the fabric of ancient epic onto a contemporary reality," the Swedish Arts Council, which organizes the award, said in its statement.
The Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award was inaugurated the year after the Swedish author's death to honor children and youth literature authors.Image: AP
One of Mourlevat's biggest successes was the young adult novel Le combat d’hiver (Winter Song, also published as Winter's End), which tells the story of four parentless students who are repressed and reprimanded at a boarding school. It may have been inspired by Mourlevat’s own life. He himself attended eight unhappy years at a strict boarding school and has said in interviews that reading was his only salvation, according to his biography on the memorial award's website.
The memorial award ceremony began the year after Lindgren’s death, and its inaugural winners were US author Maurice Sendack, known for his famous book Where the Wild Things Are and Christine Noestlinger of Austria. Last year’s winner was South Korean illustrator Baeck Heena.
