The IBBY General Assembly is scheduled to approve the decision during a session in Macau, China on September 23.
This will be the first time the head of the jury will be from a country outside of Europe and the Americas. The previous president was U.S. scholar Jeffrey Garrett.
Qaiini is a member of the Children’s Book Council of Iran, which is responsible for nominating Iranian authors, illustrators, and translators for the Hans Christian Andersen Awards and IBBY’s Honor List.
Vasja Cerar (Slovenia), Isabelle Nieres-Chevrel (France), Lona Gericke (South Africa), Grazia Gotti (Italy), Maija Korhonen (Finland), Angela Lebedeva (Russia), Bill Nagelkerke (New Zealand), Parnaz Nayeri (Iran), Maria Cecilia Silva-Diaz (Venezuela), and Junko Yokota (USA) are the members of the jury.
The Hans Christian Andersen Awards are presented every even numbered year in March to an author and an illustrator, living at the time of the nomination, whose complete works have made a lasting contribution to children's literature. The awards are the highest international recognition given to authors and illustrators of children's books.
Margaret Mahy from New Zealand and Wolf Erlbruch from Germany are the winners of the 2006 Hans Christian Andersen author and illustration awards, which will be presented at the opening ceremony of IBBY’s Congress in Beijing, China on September 20.
MMS/HG
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MNA
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