Canadian illustrator Jon Klassen has won the 2026 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award. I wanted to share some background reading about this wonderful illustrator and show you many of his books. I discovered Jon Klassen came to the Sydney Writers Festival in 2016 - why did I miss this? My friends and I really hope we might be able to meet him at the IBBY Congress in Ottawa this year.
In 2011 Klassen's I Want My Hat Back became a runaway bestseller. With his sequel This is Not My Hat, Klassen became the first children's book illustrator to win the equally prestigious American Caldecott Medal and the British Kate Greenaway Medal for the same book.
Here is a profile of Jon Klassen by his friend and author Mac Barnett. And an interview with Owl Connected.
Klassen was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, in 1981 and grew up in Niagara Falls and Toronto, Ontario. He studied animation and graduated in 2005 and moved to Los Angeles.
Illustration from House Held up by Trees
Book list:
- I Want My Hat Back
- This Is Not My Hat
- We Found a Hat
The Rock from the Sky
The Skull: A Tyrolean Folktale
The Shape Trilogy
Extra Yarn
Sam and Dave Dig a Hole
The Wolf, the Duck, and the Mouse
How Does Santa Go Down the Chimney
How does Santa go down the Chimney?
Cats' Night Out, by Carolyn Stutson (won the Canada Council for the Arts Governor General’s Award)
House Held Up by Trees, by Ted Kooser
The Dark, by Lemony Snicket
New Board Book series published April 2026
The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place by Maryrose Wood
- Book I: The Mysterious Howling
- Book II: The Hidden Gallery
- Book III: The Unseen Guest
- Book IV: The Interrupted Tale
Vanished, by Sheela Chari
The Watch that Ends the Night: Voices from the Titanic, by Allan Wolf
The Nest, by Kenneth Oppel
Skunk and Badger, by Amy Timberlake
Egg Marks The Spot, by Amy Timberlake
Here is a new book coming out in July - large sized board book:
Here are the things in this house: a chair, a clock on the wall, a stool, a lamp. And more. What’s missing from this house? Somebody. This is the house with nobody in it.
Well, there might be something . . .
And this board book was published in January this year:
Question asked by Seven Impossible things in 2011: As a book lover, it interests me: What books or authors and/or illustrators influenced you as an early reader?
Jon: My favorites when I was little were P. D. Eastman’s books. As an illustrator, he was very straightforward and approachable, but as a storyteller I think he was pretty experimental. I’d love to be that same combination when I grow up. My favorite was Sam and the Firefly. Also Go, Dog. Go!, which isn’t even a story, it’s just a bunch of random stuff happening, but it had this weird way of all hanging together and building to an ending, and when it was done you really felt like something had happened.
I also really loved Arnold Lobel’s Frog and Toad books. He’s going into such big problems and emotions in those books, but the language and the pictures are so comfortable and easy that you’re not scared away. There are a lot of illustrators I came late to that I wish I had known about when I was little, like Brian Wildsmith, Leo Lionni, and Tove Jansson.
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