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 literary award not only is awarded to authors and illustrators, but also story-tellers, promoters and children literature institutes and promoters of book reading can gain it, as well. Each year, this award is awarded to one or more artist or promoter, etc. depart from what language and nationality they have.
Works of these artists should have high artistic quality and humane values to which Astrid Lindgren used to believe.
The prize is five million SEK, making it the richest award in children’s literature and the second richest literary prizes in the world (after Hans Christian Andersen Award).
The Children’s Book Council of Iran, an independent and non-governmental organization whose aim is developing an “original and enriched children literature”, and the representative of IBBY in Iran, introduced Farhad Hassanzadeh (1962-), Iranian author, journalist and humor columnist, in the category of authors, Farshid Shafiei (1968-), painter, illustrator, animator, in the category of illustrators and the project of “Read With Me” (a project for promoting reading books in Iran), the Research Institute of Children Literature History (a non-governmental and non-profit whose job is researching about history of children literature in Iran) to the secretariat of The Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award (ALMA 2020).
Currently, the Children’s Book Council of Iran, Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults, Research Center of Children Literature History and Iranian Association of Writers for Children and Youth are four Iranian organizations which are allowed to introduce candidates to taking this award.
