Missing Page type: KR - Artikelsida

Astrid Lindgren is Sweden’s favourite author and one of the world’s most popular. She passed away in 2002 at the age of 94, but her stories will live forever. To honour her memory and promote children’s and youth literature around the world, the Swedish government has founded an international prize in her name: The Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award.

The award, of five million Swedish crowns, is the world’s largest for children’s and youth literature, and the second-largest literature prize in the world.

From the Swedish people to the world

The Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award is in many ways an award from the Swedish people to the world. This is partly because it is paid for by public funding, but also because of the wide and deep affection for Astrid Lindgren and her works from generations of Swedes. The books about Pippi Longstocking, Karlsson on the Roof and her other beloved characters can be found on most bookshelves in Sweden, often so well read that they are almost falling apart.

Many of Astrid’s characters are brave, so it is not so surprising that they ventured out around the world early on. Astrid Lindgren’s books have been translated into 91 different languages and more than 145 million copies have been sold in countries all over the world.


Illustration: Fibben Hald

More than a literature prize

Illustrations are at least as important as words in most children’s books, and many such books have strong roots in oral storytelling. That is why it is so natural that the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award is more than just a literature prize. Or rather it is a literature prize in the widest possible sense of the phrase. Not only authors are eligible. Illustrators, story-tellers and people or organisations that make valuable contributions to the promotion of reading can also be recognised.

Few have done as much for children’s right to be children, and for their imaginations, as Astrid Lindgren. She was always on the children’s side. Fearless as Pippi Longstocking. As imaginative as Emil in the Soup Tureen. Compassionate like the brothers Lionheart.

Children deserve the best

This award in Astrid Lindgren's name aims to give children’s and youth literature the place it deserves in the world. The prize can attract new, gifted story-tellers, authors and illustrators and encourage them to create good literature.

The prize is also a signal to institutions and organisations around the world that good children’s and youth literature is worth millions. And our children are worth more than millions.

Good children’s literature gives the child a place in the world, and the world a place in the child.