For the tenth time, the German Academy for Children’s and Young Adult Literature, together with the Börsenblatt and the Frankfurt Book Fair, is awarding the ‘Serafina’ prize for young illustrators. “I Wish I Were a Tree”, written by Andrea Hensgen and illustrated by Hannah Brückner is one of the five nominees!
This is what the jury said:
“Hannah Brückner approaches an old tree from a variety of perspectives – the child telling the story would love to be so stable that no one could carry it away. The way the illustrator translates the fear of moving and the longing to stay into pictures, the way she creates scenes for the cinema of the mind with just a few contour lines: masterly. In an even more minimalist way, she captures a cosmos of loneliness and homelessness in a furious penultimate picture and at the same time sets a sign of hope beyond the text: with a seedling.” – German Academy for Children’s Literature, Serafine Newcomer Illustration Award
[click on the cover for more information]