Julia Lentge

Since its inception in 1956 Germany’s sole state-run prize for literature has been funded and awarded each year by the Federal Ministry for Families, Pensioners, Women and Young People, with the prize going to outstanding works in the area of children’s literature.

If we take a quick glance at the aims behind the prize and the way it has evolved, the first thing to be said is that the German Children’s Literature Prize has always kept fully in step with the changing times, remaining constantly alert to the way society’s needs have developed and responding to them accordingly. Its original purpose was to combat the ‘trash and filth’ element in literature for the young; these days it serves as an important aid to orientation in a vast market that produces almost 7000 new books for children and young people every year.

The preamble to the prize declares that its aim is to ‘encourage children and young people to involve themselves in literature and to respond to its challenges’. The German Children’s Literature Prize takes young readers seriously. It sees itself as a useful guide both for parents and for teachers and other professionals — but not solely as that: it also enables children and young people to become active participants themselves. This is well demonstrated by the children’s jury that was introduced nationwide in 2003: in reading clubs across the length and breadth of the country young people sift through the current offerings of the book market and discuss their favourite books. In so doing they not only learn how to form judgements about the books they read and how to articulate their views — they also raise the profile of reading within their peer group as a whole.

In addition, the prize is intended ‘to further the development of literature for children and young people, to maintain the public’s interest in it, and to encourage discussion, whilst at the same time drawing the public’s attention to important new books and other developments within the field’. A key feature of the German Children’s Literature Prize is its independent status. Untrammelled as it is by market interests or economic aspirations, it is a reliable indicator of quality and innovation. This is further guaranteed by the specially elected and unpaid jurors and by the independent nature of the Arbeitskreis für Jugendliteratur (Children’s Literature Study Group), the body that has handled the prize on behalf of the Federal Ministry for Families for over fifty years.



An enormous amount of time and effort has been devoted to the 2008 German Children’s Book Prize both by the nine-person Critics’ Jury consisting of professionals from the fields of book-selling, libraries, schools, universities and literary criticism, and also by the fully independent Young People’s Jury made up of six reading clubs totalling more than one hundred members. The two juries sifted through the new books published during 2007 and examined the 540 submissions made by publishers. The next step was to nominate six titles in each category, with the resulting thirty nominations being announced and presented at the Leipzig Book Fair.

The whole process then culminated on 17 October 2008 when the German Children’s Book Prize was duly awarded by Gerd Hoofe, Permanent Secretary of the Federal Ministry for Families — and awarded for the fifty-third year in succession. The awards ceremony was transferred to the Frankfurt Book Fair in 1996, and in the course of the intervening thirteen years it has developed into the Fair’s largest single event with over one thousand guests from home and abroad.


Gabriele Haefs

The €10,000 Special Prize was awarded this year to the translator Gabriele Haefs. In giving her the prize the jury wished to give public recognition to her entire body of work as a translator of children’s books: ‘She is virtuosic in her handling of extremely diverse narrative voices and structures and modes of dialogue. In her translations of books for children and young people she resolutely refuses to prettify or simplify anything and by so doing demonstrates just as much respect for her target readership as she does for the readers of her more general literary translations.’ The Special Prize has formed part of the German Children’s Literature Prize since 1991 and is awarded each year by turns to a German author, illustrator or translator. The translators whose overall output has been thus recognised in previous years are Mirjam Pressler (1994), Birgitta Kicherer (1999), Cornelia Crutz-Arnold (2002) and Harry Rowohlt (2005).

A prize to the value of €8000 was awarded in each of the four categories ‘Picture books’, ‘Books for younger children’, ‘Books for older children’ and ‘Non-fiction’. In the Picture books category the Critics’ Jury awarded the prize to Susanne Janssen for her newly illustrated version of the Grimm brothers’ fairy tale Hansel and Gretel: ‘With her sense for the archaic and her cool yet powerful images, the artist seizes on the psychological undercurrents in this tale and thereby brings it vividly to life for today’s young readers.’



The prize for the best book for younger children went to the American author Paula Fox and her translator Brigitte Jakobeit for Ein Bild für Ivan (original title: ‘Portrait of Ivan’): ‘This poetically concise, almost compressed novel deals very nimbly with the question of images: images of self, images of others, reflected images. Handling her topic with virtuosity, Fox draws an impressive portrait of a boy who has scarcely ever experienced affection or warmth.’



The winner in the Books for older children category was Was wäre wenn (original title: Just in Case): ‘In this novel of adolescence, the grandly conceived interplay of identities and the protagonist’s egomaniacal obsession with his own self are handled by Meg Rosoff with brio and sparkling wit. Brigitte Jakobeit has succeeded in producing a finely nuanced translation of this enigmatic yet humorous story.’



With his prize-winning non-fiction book Der Kick. Ein Lehrstück über die Gewalt (‘The kick. A didactic play on the subject of violence’), the documentary film-maker Andres Veiel chronicles an unimaginably brutal act: the murder in 2002 of 16-year-old Marinus Schöberl by three of his friends in Potzlow, Brandenburg: ‘The book attempts to pin down its subject matter by documenting, fictionalising and researching it all at the same time.’ The jury praised the book’s ‘educative purpose, depth of information and well-targeted thrust’.



The fully independent Young People’s Jury, consisting of six reading clubs spread across the whole of Germany and numbering more than a hundred members, has been awarding its own prize each year since 2003. This year, the Young People’s Jury Prize, also amounting to €8000, was awarded to the French writer Marie-Aude Murail and her translator Tobias Scheffel for Simpel (‘Simple-minded’). In the jury’s own words: ‘The author powerfully conveys the fundamental dilemma in dealing with the handicapped: isolation in a home, or integration into the community? The lively, bubbly style initially conveys the impression that this is merely popular literature, albeit of the best possible kind — but it soon becomes clear that it is a social critique of the highest order.



The award of these prizes has of course brought prize year 2008 to an end — but the prize whirligig carries on without pause. The two juries have already been hard at work for several weeks now, checking, sifting, reading and discussing in readiness for the German Children’s Literature Prize 2009. We are already agog to see what the outcome will be!

Julia Lentge is a project leader at the Arbeitskreis für Jugendliteratur e.V. (Children’s Literature Study Group), where the German Children’s Literature Prize is one of her main responsibilities.

Click here to read the speech by Dr Caroline Roeder, Chair of the jury, on ‘New parameters in literature for children and young people’, given on the occasion of her announcement of the nominations for the 2008 German Children’s Literature Prize.

[Translated by Helena Ragg-Kirkby]