Christian award and certificate

Hans Christian Andersen Award Jury 2002: Jury president's report: Guardian of Gates, The

The Roman god Janus guarded the gate of heaven. He had two faces, looking both forward and back, and the month dedicated to him, January, looks forward to the new year and back on the past one.

In a slightly similar manner, the Hans Christian Andersen Awards can look back on the previous jury system and forward to better years with the new one. The Andersen Jury is also the double guardian of the gates to the Andersen awards themselves-as near to heaven as any children's book creator can aspire to be!

The Andersen Award was launched in 1956 when the first award was presented to Eleanor Farjeon. She was, incidentally, the only author from Britain to receive this award until Aidan Chambers this year. The jury consisted at first of seven, then eight members who shared the task of assessing both the authors and illustrators nominated. The problem was that each year the number of candidates grew. When I was elected to the Jury in 1997, there were over fifty candidates. Each was supported by an average of eight books. That meant some four hundred books to try to read or examine, with the fifty dossiers. It was an enormous workload. (And remember that Andersen jurors receive no honorarium for their efforts.)

That was why, when I became Jury President, I proposed a change. Instead of eight jurors there would be ten: five to judge the Author Award and five the Illustrator Award. The IBBY Executive Committee passed the proposal, with some reservations. The IBBY General Assembly in Cartagena de Indias agreed on the necessary change in the IBBY statutes, with some even more strongly voiced reservations. Well, Janus can reassure you-it works. Indeed, those jurors who worked under both systems have given thanks with tears in their eyes! Each section of the jury has half the workload and can concentrate fully on the task at hand.

The 2002 jury for writing was: Gunilla Boren (Sweden), Toin Duijx (Netherlands), Hildegard Gartner (Austria), Marianne Martens (USA), Laura Sandroni (Brazil); and for illustration: Silvia Castrillon (Colombia), Virginia Davis (Canada), Claude Hubert-Ganiayre (France), Julia Prosalkova (Russia), Zohreh Ghaeni (Iran). They were joined at the jury table by Tayo Shima (IBBY President), Leena Maissen (IBBY Executive Director), and myself. Unfortunately, Julia Prosalkova was unable to attend, but her views, sent by letter, were read out to the illustrator jury. I thank them all for their cheerful hard work and constructive thinking.

We all met together for an informal supper-- kindly arranged and hosted by Leena Maissen-- and we met together again at the end of the second day to share views and then to go together for a fine dinner. However, there is one snag to this new system: each half of the Jury gets one day off to explore Basel. But the Jury President, the IBBY President, and the Executive Director don't!

The 2002 deliberations can be applauded on at least two counts: the jurors had done their homework thoroughly, and the national sections had produced dossiers for their candidates that were fuller and more helpful than on many previous occasions. From twenty-eight author candidates, the choice of the jury was Aidan Chambers (United Kingdom), with Bart Moeyaert (Belgium) and Bjarne Reuter (Denmark) as the other finalists in the voting. From twenty-seven illustrator candidates, the jury selected Quentin Blake (United Kingdom) as the winner, with Rotraut Susanne Berner (Germany), Daihachi Ohta (Japan), and Gregoire Solotareff (France) as the other finalists.

It is, perhaps, interesting to note that all three author finalists worked mainly in the teenage category. There is a little nagging doubt at the back of my mind that writing "big books" for young adults is seen as more worthy than creating "little books" for primary children. Yet the younger the readers, the harder it is to write for them. To clear one other worry: there is no prejudice toward the Englishspeaking world in selecting author medal winners. There is a tendency to prefer authors whose works can be submitted to the jury in translation: this can be a computer printout; it doesn't have to be in published form. But an author, however important and skilled, who writes in a language that none of the jury can read frankly doesn't stand a chance unless his work can be made available in translation, preferably in English, since that is the language of jury discussion.

Illustration is no less easy to assess, for a juror has to be able to evaluate different styles of illustration. I was reassured to note that the four 2002 illustrator finalists represented four totally different styles of children's book art. The winner, Quentin Blake, was recently selected as Britain's first ever Children's Laureate. Both he and the author winner, Aidan Chambers, have done much to build appreciation of the world of children's literature-for the Hans Christian Andersen Awards are given to an author and an illustrator "whose complete body of work has made an outstanding contribution to children's literature." To my mind, that means that an Andersen winner should have done more than just be a brilliant writer or illustrator.

By coincidence, both 2002 medal winners are from the same country. It should be noted that each jury worked separately, neither knowing how the other had voted-and also that of the thirteen people involved in the deliberations, only two had English as their mother tongue. The only previous occasion for such a double victory was in 1986 when both Patricia Wrightson and Robert Ingpen of Australia received the awards. For those interested in statistics, twenty-two different countries have produced an Andersen winner. The United States is top of the league with six winners; the United Kingdom four; Sweden, Germany, Denmark, Czechoslovakia and Japan three each; and two each from France, Brazil, Austria, Australia, and Switzerland.

For this year's awards, thirty-one IBBY national sections nominated candidates. (I do not conceal my pride that Niki Daly was the first ever candidate from South Africa.) For many of these candidates, to be nominated for their country is the highest possible honor in the children's literature field. For this reason, the IBBY Executive Committee has approved another innovation: all Andersen candidates will receive a certificate to mark their nomination.

As Janus looks both back and forward, he can note with further approval the kind patronage of Queen Margrethe II of Denmark and the generous sponsorship of Nissan Motor Company. Past Andersen winner Katherine Paterson has used the phrase "Gates of Excellence" for one of her books on children's literature. As guardians of these gates, I think that the Andersen Jury and procedures have once again allowed through two worthy winners.

Jay Heale, President of the Hans Christian Andersen Jury 2002, also has served on the Andersen jury in 1996 and 1998 and as President of the Jury in 2000. He is an author, educator, critic, and secretary of the South African Children's Book Forum, the South African National Section of IBBY.