IBBY (International Board on Books for Young People) has announced the shortlist of nominees for the 2024 Hans Christian Andersen Prize, the most prestigious international award for children’s books, known as the Little Nobel Prize. Iwona Chmielewska was again among the finalists in the illustrator category.

Iwona Chmielewska has already been nominated for the award in 2018, 2020 and 2022. So far, she has also made it to the final shortlist twice. So far, only one Pole, Zbigniew Rychlicki, has managed to get onto the IBBY Prize shortlist. He is an outstanding Polish graphic designer and illustrator, who was also the only Polish winner of the “Little Nobel Prize” so far. He received it in 1982,” reports the Book Institute.

This year’s shortlist included six authors and six illustrators. In the author category, the nominees are: Marina Colasanti (Brazil), Heinz Janisch (Austria), Lee Geum-yi (South Korea), Bart Moeyaert (Belgium), Timo Parvela (Finland) and Edward van de Vendel (Netherlands). Nominations in the illustrator category in addition to Iwona Chmielewska received: Cai Gao (China), Nelson Cruz (Brazil), Elena Odriozola (Spain), Sydney Smith (Canada) and Paloma Valdivia (Chile).

Iwona Chmielewska is one of the best contemporary illustrators in Poland. She is also known and appreciated by foreign readers. Her books are published in South Korea, China, Japan, Taiwan, Mexico, and Germany, among others. She is a double winner of the Bologna Ragazzi Award – for the author’s picture book ‘Eyes’ and for ‘Maum. Home of the Soul’ with text by Heekyoung Kim. In Poland, she collaborates with a number of publishing houses (including Wytwórnia, Media Rodzina, Warstwy, Format, Entliczek, Wolno). In 2011, she was awarded the title Book of the Year by the Polish Section of IBBY for Blumka’s Diary.

Adrian Andrzejewski