Shaun Tan nabs Lindgren Award

Shaun Tan’s mantelpiece must be getting crowded: In addition to the Oscar he picked up last month for the film version of The Lost Thing, he has now won this year’s Astrid Lindgren Award. Created to memorialize the author of Pippi Longstocking, the award goes each year to a creator or creators whose body of work “must uphold the highest artistic quality and evoke the deeply humanistic spirit that Astrid Lindgren treasured.”

The jury called Tan “a masterly visual storyteller, pointing the way ahead to new possibilities for picture books,” and one juror commented,

… I often like to think of words and images as opposite points on a battery, creating a potential voltage through a ‘gap’ between telling and showing. It requires the reader’s imagination to complete the circuit …

The prize is a cash prize of 5 million kroner, and previous recipients include Maurice Sendak and Philip Pullman.

The awards site includes a recording of the phone call in which Tan learned he was the winner, which is a nice touch.