Swedes dish out award for a 'masterly storyteller'
The Age
Thursday March 31, 2011
AFTER the hoo-hah of winning an Oscar a couple of weeks ago, Shaun Tan thought he was bound for a quieter life. That was until he got a phone call from Sweden on Tuesday night telling him he had won the world's richest award for children's and young-adult literature, the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, worth 5 million krona ($A765,000)."I was washing the dishes when my phone went," he told The Age. "I couldn't recognise the number and I was going to ignore it. I was very confused and I only picked it up at the last moment."The voice at the other end mentioned Astrid Lindgren and I thought they probably wanted more information about me because I knew I had been nominated for it and they always want lots of details."But then, in a formal way, the voice said they had chosen me as recipient of the prize and asked, 'How do you feel', and I was still doing the dishes."Tan's call came only a couple of hours before the official announcement. When he heard a round of applause, he was alarmed to realise that, from his kitchen sink, he was on speaker phone to the awards committee.Its citation describes Tan as "a masterly visual storyteller, pointing the way ahead to new possibilities for picture books". Tan has illustrated more than 20 books, including The Rabbits, The Red Tree, The Arrival, and Tales from Outer Suburbia.Tan said the award, which like the Nobel prize is given for a body of work, was almost the polar opposite of the Academy Award he received for his short animated film, The Lost Thing."The Oscar is a great award, but this feels more significant because it is not voted on. There is serious deliberation and they said it was a unanimous decision, which I was surprised about."The writer and illustrator, who was raised in Perth but has lived in Melbourne for many years, said he would probably use some of the money to get new studio facilities."At the moment, my wife and I live in rental accommodation and I work in the smallest bedroom in the house. We are both artists and had decided that this was the year we were going to do something about it."Tan said he would donate some of the prize money to funds such as the Indigenous Literacy Project.
© 2011 The Age
