Blogging Librarian

Australian author, Sonya Hartnett, was announced as this year’s awardee for the Astrid Lindgren Memorial award for literature. The award comes with a 5m Swedish kronor prize (S$1.41m) and this is the sixth installment of the award. She would be presented with the award on 28 May by Sweden’s Crown Princess Victoria at Stockholm’s open-air Skansen museum.

Hartnett, 39, has written about 18 novels for children, young people and adults. She wrote her first novel, Trouble All The Way, when she was only 15. Other books include Surrender, Stripes of the Sidestep Wolf, Forest, What the Birds See, Thursday’s Child, and Princes.

The award is given out by Swedish government to commemorate the creator of the popular Pippi Longstocking books. The purpose of the prize is to promote interest in children’s and youth literature around the world as well as to strengthen children’s rights on a global scale. Previous winners of the Astrid Lindgren Memorial award include Philip Pullman and Maurice Sendak.