Beloved Children’s Illustrator Annemarie van Haeringen Awarded Prestigious Max Velthuijs Prize
Amsterdam, Netherlands – Illustrator Annemarie van Haeringen has been honored with the Max Velthuijs Prize, a lifetime achievement award recognizing outstanding contributions to Dutch children’s literature.The announcement was made today,November 21,2025,by the prize committee.
The Max Velthuijs Prize, awarded every three years, celebrates the body of work of a Dutch children’s book illustrator. Van Haeringen, 66, receives a €60,000 prize and a statue of frog, the iconic character created by Max Velthuijs himself. This recognition underscores the enduring power of illustration in fostering a love of reading and imagination in young audiences, and highlights van Haeringen’s four-decade career impacting generations of Dutch children.
Van Haeringen has illustrated both her own picture books and works by other authors, consistently earning praise for her distinctive style. The jury specifically lauded her “striking use of color, the friendliness and the subtle humor that expresses gracefulness of her drawing pen.”
Throughout her career,van Haeringen has received numerous accolades,including three Golden Brush awards for Mills (1999),The Princess with the Long Hair (2000),and Bear is on Butterfly (2005).More recently,she and Bibi Dumon Tak jointly won the 2023 Woutertje Pieterse Prize for Today I’m giving my talk about the anaconda.
“I hope to continue to surprise myself in the future,” van Haeringen stated at the award ceremony. “And above all, I hope that children can lose themselves in my books, away from this world for a while. Immerse themselves in a world that you did not know yet and where you will hopefully be surprised.”
Past recipients of the Max Velthuijs Prize include Philip Hopman (2022), Dick Bruna (2016), and Thé Tjong-Khing (2010).
