Astrid Lindgren Award to Sonya Hartnett
March 12, 2008
The 2008 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award went to the Australian author Sonya Hartnett. The prize given by the Swedish government honors the creator of Pippi Longstocking and consists of 5 million Swedish krona. It's the largest prize in children's literature. (According to Yahoo! Finance's currency converter, that's the equivalent of some 820,000 U.S. dollars. Can that be right? Wow.)
Hartnett's many novels include Thursday's Child, The Silver Donkey, and Surrender.
I was just reading about this too - it says on their site that the prize is equivalent to approx. USD 790,000 - how wonderfully astonishing.
Posted by: Sara | March 13, 2008 at 10:37 AM
Hey, Sara. An amazing amount of money, isn't it? I suppose it depends on the time that you calculate it how much it's worth in US dollars. Can you imagine the fits that would break out in the US if the government gave such money to a writer? Good for the Swedes!
Posted by: Susan T. | March 13, 2008 at 11:09 AM