The Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award is one of the most considerable world prizes for children and adolescent literature, awarded by the Swedish government in honor of Astrid Lindgren. It is the greatest and most expensive Children and Adolescent Literature Prize and the second great literature prize in the world after the Hans Christian Andersen Prize, which can be won not only by writers and illustrators but also by storytellers, promoters, and institutions active in the field of children’s literature and book promotion.
The purpose of this award is to enhance and raise the quality of children’s literature and to pay more attention to children’s rights in the world. Annually, more than 60 countries from around the world participate in this competition and the prize is awarded to one or more artists or promoters, regardless of their language and nationality. Accordingly, in Iran, the nomination committees for 2021 award are the Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults, Children’s Book Council, Research Institute for the History of Children’s Literature and the Society of Children’s Book Writers.
“Hamid Reza Shahabadi” as an author of books for children and adolescents and the mobile rural libraries of the Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults in the book promotion projects section have been also nominated for the award 2021. Hamid Reza Shahabadi is a contemporary historian, novelist, and playwright. He is one of the writers in the field of adolescent and adult literature and one of the high-profile directors in the field of publication and an ex-manager of the publications of the Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults and Al-Mahdi International Publication Institute. Last year, the Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults nominated Houshang Moradi Kermani as an author and its mobile libraries in the field of book promotion projects for the Astrid Lindgren Prize.
In the meantime, the “Peyk-e Omid” of the institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults in the sub-branch of the institute’s mobile activities will be introduced to the secretariat of the award. “Peyk-e Omid” is an activity based on which the institute utilizes its potential and experienced instructors and the vehicles of mobile libraries and attends the critical areas such as flooded or earthquake-hit areas and low-income areas in order to run literary and artistic programs to improve the residents’ mental health and morale, especially children and adolescents. Last year, the award went to Beak Hee-na, a children’s book illustrator from South Korean.
