The Children’s Book Council (CBC) will nominate Khanian as a nominee for the 2022 Hans Christian Andersen World Award.
The reasons for this election, while emphasizing the prominent and influential role of his works in the process of the new formation of Iranian Children and Adolescent Literature, are as follow:
1) Emphasis on human issues today, such as war, migration, discrimination, loneliness, death, intergenerational reading, association’s members’ crises, identity, indigenous life expenses, and specific cultures, exceptional attention to an urban middle-class lifestyle, peace, empathy, friendship, love, respect for others and family;
2) Achieving a specific writing style by em. Their form, technique, aesthetic aspects of narrative language and dramatic dialogues, paying particular attention to the character as well as arousing curiosity, questioning, and the development of critical and philosophical thinking of the audience;
3) His works have received numerous domestic awards and honors such as Book of the Season, Book of the Year, Twenty Years of Literature Award, Special Award for a Quarter of Century, Literature in the Adolescent Novel sections, Playwriting and Artistic Research by institutions such as the Children’s Book Council, Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults, the Book House, Flying Turtle, Mehr Taha, the Isfahan Literary Award, children’s and youth literary magazines and the Fajr International Theater Festival.
He has also received many international honors, such as “The beautiful heart of Babur,” a book on the White Crow list (International Youth Library in Munich) in 2005; The IBBY Honour List 2012 for “Seventh Floor West” and 2014 for “Younes’s Ballades in the Fish’s Stomach” as well as some of his plays selected for theatrical festivals in Germany, Baku, and Moscow.
In 2018, Khanian was also nominated for the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award by the Iranian Association of Writers for Children and Youth.
He was also nominated for the same award in 2020 by the Children’s Book Council.
