Perry Nodelman Receives the International Brothers Grimm Award

Thu. Jul. 2, 2015

The International Institute for Children’s Literature in Osaka (IICLO) is pleased to announce Perry Nodelman as the fifteenth recipient of the International Brothers Grimm Award.

In September 2014, IICLO sent questionnaires to 400 scholars in which they　requested recommendations for candidates, and by the end of November 2014, the IICLO had selected 12 nominees. In December 2014, after researching these nominees and their achievements, the Japanese committee members narrowed the list of candidates down to the following four:

Clare Bradford (Australia)
Hans-Heino Ewers (Germany)
Perry Nodelman (Canada)
Roberta Seelinger Trites (U.S.A.)

In March 2015, a final meeting of the Japanese committee was held, and they decided that the winner was Professor Perry Nodelman in Canada. The award presentation ceremony and Professor Perry Nodelman’s commemorative lecture will be held on 21 November 2015. At the ceremony, a trophy and a prize of one million yen will be given by the Kinrankai Foundation, a supporter of the award.

Dr. Perry Nodelman, Professor Emeritus of University of Winnipeg, is an exemplary researcher of children’s literature and picture books internationally. His main works published in book form are: Words About Pictures: The Narrative Art of Children’s Picture Books (1988), The Pleasures of Children’s Literature (1992), and The Hidden Adult: Defining Children’s Literature (2008), all of which are highly esteemed. Words About Pictures in particular has received international recognition as a groundbreaking work in the field of research on picture books. The Pleasures of Children’s Literature is renowned as a textbook for the research of children’s literature for university students and has been translated for publication in China, Taiwan, and Korea.

He was editor of the Children’s Literature Association Quarterly for five years (1983-87) and Canadian Children’s Literature/Littérature canadienne pour la jeunesse for five years (2004-2008). He also wrote many articles on children’s literature theory and reviews of research books on children’s literature, all of which contributed to development of research in the field.

He is also a writer of twelve books of children’s and young adult fiction. Among them, the four books of the Minds Series, written with Carol Matas, are works of fantasy which encourage logical thinking and have been translated into Japanese.

Dr. Nodelman taught at the University of Winnipeg in Canada for thirty-seven years and provided valuable support to many researchers.