The Iranian Institute of Children’s Literature Historical Studies (IICLHS) named Touran Mihadi as another nominee for the fourteenth annual cycle of Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award.
A university professor on Children Literature, Mirhadi has been the editor-in-chief of Children and Teenager’s Encyclopedia since 1979; an encyclopedia that 16 volumes of it have come out and 3 new volumes are on the way.
Also an education expert, Mirhadi has been conducting research on children’s educational development for more than sixty years, including an experimental school which she ran along with her husband and Mohsen Khomarlo for 25 years between 1955 and 1980.
One of the founders of Iran’s Children’s Book Council (ICBC), she has also authored many papers and books on children and teens.
The Iranian Institute of Children’s Literature Historical Studies (IICLHS), the Institute for Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults (IIDCYA), and Iran’s Children’s Book Council (ICBC), are three Iranian bodies authorized to introduce nominees to the jury of the award.
Earlier the Institute for Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults (IIDCYA) had announced its nominees for the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award; Mostafa Rahmandoust as an accomplished Iranian children literature author and Pejman Rahimizadeh as an illustrator of children’s books.
Prior to the other two institutes, Iran’s Children’s Book Council (ICBC) had picked its nominee for illustration section; Pejman Rahimizadeh the same with the IIDCYA but a different author; Houshang Moradi Kermani, another well-known figure of children literature in Iran.
Noteworthy, the nominee introducing bodies from 94 countries are chosen by the running authorities of the award.
The last winner of the award has been the Project for the Study of Alternative Education in South Africa (PRAESA, affiliated with the University of Cape Town), who bagged the 2015 award. PRAESA was founded in 1992 in Cape Town city of South Africa.
Between 2003 and 2015, there were 15 recipients, twelve people and three institutions. There were two inaugural awards in 2003 and two in 2005.
Four of the Lindgren Award winners have also, and much earlier, won the older, international Hans Christian Andersen Award for their lifetime contributions to children's literature: Sendak as an illustrator; Nöstlinger, Nunes, and Paterson as writers.
The annual cycle begins no later than December about 9 months before nominees are announced, 15 months before the winner is announced and 18 months before the presentation.
The Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award is an international children's literary award established by the Swedish government in 2002 to honor the Swedish children's author Astrid Lindgren (1907–2002). The prize is five million SEK, making it the richest award in children's literature and the second or third richest literary prize in the world.
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