Sanna’s ‘The Journey’ wins UK picture-book prize

In the UK, Italian artist Francesca Sanna has won the 2017 Klaus Flugge Prize the most exciting newcomer to children’s picture-book illustration, reports the Guardian.

Sanna won the £5,000 (A$8,480) award for her picture book The Journey (Flying Eye), which depicts a mother and her children fleeing a war-torn country for a ‘safe place’. The book was chosen from a shortlist of four, which included Hannah and Sugar (Kate Berube, Abrams); The Museum of Me (Emma Lewis, Tate), First Snow (Bomi Park, Chronicle) and Little Red (Bethan Woollvin, Two Hoots).

Judge Axel Scheffler praised The Journey for the strongly expressed graphic language of the book, ‘which is beautifully designed’. Chair of judges and Guardian children’s editor Julia Eccleshare said it’s a story where the words and pictures work perfectly together to ‘move all readers, whatever their age’.

The Journey has been translated into 14 languages, and has been shortlisted for the 2017 Kate Greenaway Medal, awarded an Amnesty CILIP Honour, and won the US Society of Illustrators’ gold medal and Spain’s Premi Llibreter.

Now in its second year, the Klaus Flugge was launched by UK publisher Andersen Press in 2016 to award picture books by debut illustrators. Nicholas John Frith won the inaugural prize last year for Hector and Hummingbird (Alison Green Books).

Category: Awards International news Junior