Astrid Anna Emilia Lindgren was a Swedish writer of fiction and screenplays. She is best known for several children's book series, featuring Pippi Longstocking, Emil of Lönneberga, Karlsson-on-the-Roof, and the Six Bullerby Children, and for the children's fantasy novels Mio, My Son, Ronia the Robber's Daughter, and The Brothers Lionheart. Lindgren worked on the Children's Literature Editorial Board at the Rabén & Sjögren publishing house in Stockholm and wrote more than 30 books for children. In 2017, she was calculated to be the world's 18th most translated author. Lindgren had by 2010 sold roughly 167 million books worldwide. In 1994, she was awarded the Right Livelihood Award for "her unique authorship dedicated to the rights of children and respect for their individuality." Her opposition to corporal punishment of children resulted in the world's first law on the matter in 1979, while her campaigning for animal welfare led to a new law, Lex Lindgren, in time for her 80th birthday.
The Carnegie Medal for Writing, established in 1936, is a British literary award that annually recognises one outstanding new English-language book for children or young adults. It is conferred upon the author by the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP), who calls it "the UK's oldest and most prestigious book award for children's writing". CILIP is currently partnered with the audio technology company Yoto in connection with the award.
The Guardian Children's Fiction Prize or Guardian Award was a literary award that annual recognised one fiction book written for children or young adults and published in the United Kingdom. It was conferred upon the author of the book by The Guardian newspaper, which established it in 1965 and inaugurated it in 1967. It was a lifetime award in that previous winners were not eligible. At least from 2000 the prize was £1,500. The prize was apparently discontinued after 2016, though no formal announcement appears to have been made.
The Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award is an international children's literary award established by the Swedish government in 2002 to honour the Swedish children's author Astrid Lindgren (1907–2002). The prize is five million SEK, making it the richest award in children's literature and one of the richest literary prizes in the world. The annual cost of 10 million SEK is financed with tax money.
Geraldine McCaughrean is a British children's novelist. She has written more than 170 books, including Peter Pan in Scarlet (2004), the official sequel to Peter Pan commissioned by Great Ormond Street Hospital, the holder of Peter Pan's copyright. Her work has been translated into 44 languages worldwide. She has received the Carnegie Medal twice and the Michael L. Printz Award among others.
David Almond is a British author who has written many novels for children and young adults from 1998, each one receiving critical acclaim.
How I Live Now is a novel by Meg Rosoff, first published in 2004. It received generally positive reviews and won the British Guardian Children's Fiction Prize and the American Printz Award for young-adult literature.
Lauren Margot Peachy Child is an English children's author and illustrator. She is best known for the Charlie and Lola picture book series and other book series. Her influences include E. H. Shepard, Quentin Blake, Carl Larsson, and Ludwig Bemelmans.
Siobhan Dowd was a British writer and activist. The last book she completed, Bog Child, posthumously won the 2009 Carnegie Medal from the professional librarians, recognising the year's best book for children or young adults published in the UK.
Malcolm Charles Peet was an English writer and illustrator best known for young adult fiction. He has won several honours including the Brandford Boase, the Carnegie Medal and the Guardian Prize, British children's literature awards that recognise "year's best" books. Three of his novels feature football and the fictional South American sports journalist Paul Faustino. The Murdstone Trilogy (2014) and "Mr Godley's Phantom" were his first works aimed at adult readers.
Jennifer Donnelly is an American writer best known for the young adult historical novel A Northern Light.
Wolf Erlbruch was a German illustrator and writer of children's books, who became professor at several universities. He combined various techniques for the artwork in his books, including cutting and pasting, drawing, and painting. His style was sometimes surrealist and is widely copied inside and outside Germany. Some of his storybooks have challenging themes such as death and the meaning of life. They won many awards, including the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis in 1993 and 2003. Erlbruch received the Hans Christian Andersen Medal in 2006 for his "lasting contribution" as a children's illustrator. In 2017, he was the first German to win the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award.
Just in Case is a young-adult novel by Meg Rosoff published by Penguin in 2006. Its adolescent protagonist David Case spends the majority of the book attempting to avoid fate. Rosoff won the annual Carnegie Medal, recognising the year's best children's book published in the U.K. In a press release announcing the award, the librarians called it "a story about death, depression, sex, choice and survival."
Mini Grey is a British illustrator and writer of children's books, especially picture books for young children. She won the annual Kate Greenaway Medal from the professional librarians, recognising the year's best-illustrated children's book published in the UK, for The Adventures of the Dish and the Spoon, published by Jonathan Cape in 2006.
Bog Child is a historical novel by Siobhan Dowd published by David Fickling (UK) and Random House Children's Books (US) on 9 September 2008, more than a year after her death. Set in the 1980s amid the backdrop of the Troubles of Northern Ireland, it features an 18-year-old boy who must study for exams but experiences "his imprisoned brother's hunger strike, the stress of being a courier for the provisional IRA, and dreams of a murdered girl whose body he discovered in a bog." In flashback and dream there are elements of the murdered girl's prehistoric or protohistoric life and death.
Emily Jenkins, who sometimes uses the pen name E. Lockhart, is an American writer of children's picture books, young-adult novels, and adult fiction. She is known best for the Ruby Oliver quartet, The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks, and We Were Liars.
Candy Gourlay is a Filipino author based in the United Kingdom who has been shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal.
Tender Morsels (2008) is a novel by Australian author Margo Lanagan. It won the Ditmar Award in 2009 for Best Novel and was joint winner of the 2009 World Fantasy Award for Best Novel.
Frida Nilsson is a Swedish children’s writer whose first book was published in 2004. She has won numerous international shortlistings and prizes, including the August Prize, the German Youth Literature Prize, Expressens Heffaklump (2015) and the Astrid Lindgren Prize. She was recently chosen as one of the best emerging writers in Europe under 39. Nilsson’s writing is characterised by playfulness and sincerity. She has been compared to Roald Dahl and Barbro Lindgren.
Sophie Jocasta Blackall is an Australian artist, author, and illustrator of children's books based in Brooklyn, New York.
