One author = one quote! Hans Christian Andersen shortlist

On Monday April 8th the 2024 Hans Christian Andersen award winners will be announced.  I shared some details of the shortlisted authors and illustrators in a previous post. Over the last few days IBBY International have been sharing quotes from each of these creators. I will add the final names/quotes later today (Australian time):

Cai GAO
"I embrace a few things, one of them is childhood the other is self-reflection."

MARINA COLASANTI
“My pursuit is to reach, with conciseness, to the heart of things.”

HEINZ JANISCH
"Books were always like lucky bags, I wanted to know what was in them."

IWONA CHMIELEWSKA
"I collect strange scraps, sometimes taken from the trashcan—which embarrasses my children—and I never know which scrap of reality will inspire me."

GUM-YI LEE

“Coming up with ideas and developing them take much more time than the physical time of writing the words down. I call this time ‘writing with my heart.’"

NELSON CRUZ

"I confess, it is difficult to decide what to do at the moment when I understand the book as an object of transgression (...), I suffer to create, but I am happy."

BART MOEYAERT

"I think I am a good listener. I want to know what makes people tick. I also think I am open-minded. Those things go together."

ELENA ODRIOZOLA

"If I have nothing to say, then I prefer to stay quiet".

TIMO PARVELA

"I’ve long abandoned the idea that I should know everything about the everyday reality in which children live today: I write fiction, which means I can determine the laws and realities inside the story."

SYDNEY SMITH 

“Listening … is more in line with how I approach stories.”

EDWARD VAN DE VEDEL 

"There is a kind of addictive primal pleasure in writing and telling stories."

PALOMA VALDIVIA

"Books and art in general are a refuge, a way to survive the confinement and tedium of the equal days. "