There are days when the Astrid Lindgren memorial award (Alma), most are annoying. Children and ungdomslitteraturen is such a vast field. Should you choose a brilliant visual artist as canadian Jon Class, or a brilliant ungdomsfantasyförfattare-Maria Turtschaninoff? A poet or prosaist? Someone older, perhaps no longer as popular among today’s kids, or someone young who do not have achieved so much? Children and ungdomslitteraturen is more perishable than other literature: books that live on in generation after generation.
Almapriset with that according to the statutes are also able to share out the prize to a literacy organization, or an oral storyteller. The latter has, so far, left unchecked, for obvious reasons.
Comparatively, has the Swedish Academy, a relatively simple work, when they just need to rummage through the writing before the Nobel prize. They need not judge the art for very small children, they do not need to assess the efficiency of an organization. They can concentrate on the texts.
, flamländaren Bart Moeyert, has not yet become particularly popular in Sweden. Only a few books have been translated into Swedish, where ungdomsboken ”Love you don’t understand” is the best known (Rabén & Sjögren, translated by Annika Johansson, 2001). It is a black story about a family that goes to pieces after her son reveals what he experienced, and Bart Moeyaert is hugely capable when he highlights the impossibility of family relationships, where so many conflicting emotions can exist at the same time: love, loyalty, fury, and disappointment.
Bart Moeyaert is a gifted author, well worth a Almapris, and my own frustration is maybe more about how impossible it is for the price to include all children and ungdomslitteraturen. So far, nine writers, six illustrators and three literacy organizations received the award, and it is a good breakdown. It is still the author most people think of when it comes to the literary prize.
that so few prize to illustrators, and so get the prize to literature for younger children. Even the Swedish Augustjuryn have tended to share out the prize to the young people.
Bart Moeyaert writes, while books for all ages, just as last year’s laureate Jacqueline Woodson, but it’s the booksellers, which is his masterpiece.
It had been more exciting if a pure children’s author had received the award, such as the Norwegian poet Gro Dahle. Then had Almajuryn stuck his neck out properly, and rewarded anyone who knows how to express themselves for the very smallest.
Read more: Bart Moeyaert is the year Almapristagare