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  • Presentation of the Hans Christian Andersen Awards 2012
  • Elizabeth Page (bio)

Laudation by María Jesús Gil, President of the Hans Christian Andersen Jury 2012

Mr. President, Distinguished Laureates, Most valued Hosts and Sponsors, Esteemed Guests:

As the President of the 2012 Hans Christian Andersen Awards Jury, I am very proud to be here, in London, to introduce the winners of the 2012 Hans Christian Andersen medals – María Teresa Andruetto and Peter Sís.

As soon as the Jury selected the winners, I informed to the patron of the Awards, Her Majesty Queen Margrethe II of Denmark, who has kindly granted me permission to extend Her heartiest congratulations to the two winners today. I send our gratitude to Her Majesty for Her patronage of these awards.

I would also like to express my gratitude to this year’s Jury that I have had the honour to preside. Working with these ten distinguished experts in literature for children from five continents, has been an extraordinary experience for me. Many of them are with us this evening. Allow me to recognize them and their fantastic job: Anastasia Arkhipova from Russia; Françoise Ballanger from France; Ernest Bond from USA; Sabine Fuchs from Austria; Ayfer Gürdal Ünal from Turkey; Jan Hansson from Sweden; Eva Kaliskami from Greece; Nora Lía Sormani from Argentina; Sahar Tarhandeh from Iran, and, Regina Zilberman from Brazil. Elda Nogueira, representing IBBY and IBBY Executive Director Liz Page also attended as ex officio non-voting Jury members. As President of this Jury I want to express my gratitude all of them.


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María Jesús Gil (photo by Doris Breitmoser)

The Jury spent more than nine months studying the books and dossiers of [End Page 87] candidates nominated from 32 countries. In behalf of IBBY, I thank you for your dedication.

Furthermore, I would especially like to thank Mr Kang, the CEO of Nami Island Inc., the sponsor of the Hans Christian Andersen Awards, for the generous support of this the most prestigious award given to the creators of children’s literature. I thank him also for his inspiring words that he just shared with us. I also warmly welcome the Minn family who are here from Nami Island.

And now, in the name of IBBY and of Jury, it is my privilege and pleasure to briefly introduce you to our 2012 winners whom we are honouring this evening.

It is very easy to say: “briefly introduce”. But, in fact, it is a hard, almost impossible challenge. How to reduce to five or six minutes the enormous work of our talented winners, two artists of the stature of María Teresa Andruetto and Peter Sís?

However, let me make the attempt, relying on the indulgence of the winners. Both of them have in common an ability that is very deep, sincere, and intelligent. Both of them have lived through great difficulties during their lives.

Maria Teresa Andruetto experienced the consequences of the military dictatorship in Argentina. Peter Sís was born in the former Czechoslovakia – on the Red side – the Communist side – of the Iron Curtain. However, they have overcome all the difficulties in their paths and, through their work have, by making an ever-lasting contribution to children’s literature, given children and adults the message that we must aim for a better world.

The winner of the 2012 Hans Christian Andersen Medal for writing is María Teresa Andruetto from Argentina.

María Teresa Andruetto was born in Arroyo Cabral, Córdoba, Argentina. She is the daughter of an Italian immigrant who arrived in Argentina after the Second World War, but she did not begin to write until the end of the military dictatorship in Argentina.

She writes without having in mind if her books are for children or for adults. In her book Hacia una literatura sin adjetivos/ Towards a literature without adjectives she asks herself: “To write for children or just to write?”

In the same book she says: “A writer is a person whose more pure pleasure is to find among thousand of words, the words.”

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