Crew, Ottley nominated for 2024 Hans Christian Andersen Awards

Writer Gary Crew and illustrator Matt Ottley have been nominated by IBBY (International Board on Books for Young People) Australia as the Australian candidates for the 2024 Hans Christian Andersen Awards.

Crew has been shortlisted or nominated for over 50 Australian and international literary awards, and has won the Children’s Book Council of Australia (CBCA) Book of the Year Award four times: twice for his novels, twice for his illustrated books. Crew has been a lecturer at the Queensland University of Technology, and since the 2000s at the University of the Sunshine Coast, where he is currently Emeritus Professor.

Ottley has been recipient of the CBCA Picture Book of the Year Award twice: in 2021 for How To Make a Bird (written by Meg McKinlay, Walker), which also won the Prime Minister’s Literary Award, the West Australian Premier’s Prize for Writing for Children 2020 and was shortlisted in the Queensland Literary Awards; and in 2008 for Requiem for a Beast (Lothian), which won the Queensland Premier’s Literary Award in 2008. Ottley has also received a Special Mention in the BolognaRagazzi Crossmedia Award at the Bologna Book Fair for The Tree of Ecstasy and Unbearable Sadness (Dirt Lane Press).

The Hans Christian Andersen Awards are presented biennially to a living author and illustrator whose complete works have made a lasting contribution to children’s literature.

As previously reported by Books+Publishing, Margaret Wild and Tohby Riddle were nominated for the 2022 awards, with Wild being shortlisted. The 2022 award went to French children’s writer Marie-Aude Murail and Korean artist Suzy Lee.

Category: Awards Local news