The winners of the 42nd edition of the prestigious Andersen Awards have just been announced. These awards are given every year to the best authors, illustrators and children’s books in Italy.
Of the 17 categories awarded, 3 of our representatives have won:
1/ Best book for +15:
“Die Mitte der Welt” by Andreas Steinhöfel (Carlsen)
For being a powerful and never predictable novel, which happily inaugurates a new container of stories reserved for young adults. For its ability to narrate love without banalities, but highlighting the fragilities of the human soul, the need for fixed points, but also the need to take a gamble. For writing that brings places and people to life, all characters with a narrative architecture as majestic as the protagonist’s house.
2/ Best Silent Book:
“Spinne spielt Klavier” by Benjamin Gottwald (Carlsen)
For the originality of a proposal that transforms the book into a score for shared reading, where the images suggest noises, offering a sonorous dimension to the child’s gaze. A book to live together, silent but not silent at all, where we play with voice and imagination, with no other aim than the joy of being together.
3/ Best writer:
For his more than twenty years of literary work, sustained by commitment and passion and substantiated by a powerful prose, nourished by an ethical gaze capable of giving voice to the peripheries and the differences. For effective narrative solutions marked by a subtle dreamlike vein that do not renounce the concreteness of plots and adventures. For writing that is always on the side of the evolving era.
