Wednesday, 30 March 2011

Shaun Tan wins The Astrid Lindgren Prize

Australian illustrator Shaun Tan has won The Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award for Children's Literature (basically the Nobel Prize in this field - it doesn't get better than this!)

Tan has illustrated more than 20 books including, The Red Tree, The Arrival, The Lost Thing and, most recently, Tales from Outer Suburbia, which was hailed in the Guardian as possibly "the most beautiful book you'll see all year". At this year's Academy Awards, he won the Oscar for best animated short film for The Lost Thing (voiced by Tim Minchin), based on his book of the same title.


Tan's response on winning the £490,000 prize (yes, that much - that's a LOT of sharp new pencils), was a restrained "OK, OK, thanks very much. That's amazing. I'm going to have to take a little time to get used to it."

Antipodean understatement - how refreshing.

No comments:

Post a Comment