Words and music of the 2020 LIJ awards

This year of which there is little left to conclude, has left us an interesting harvest of awards in the youth segment. We review some of the largest.

One of the latest accolades to be known has been the Bookseller Awards, where the excellent album without words Migrants

(Red Fox Books) by Issa Watanabe –Which we have already talked about in these pages– it was recognized by the booksellers of Catalonia as the best illustrated album of 2020.

The American of Mexican descent Benjamin Alire Saenz is also on this list of winners with Aristotle and Dante discover the secrets of the universe (Planeta / L’Altra Editorial) a surprising and thoughtful work, if not poetic, dedicated to all young people who question, they question each other and wonder the why of things. This is what Aristotle ‘Ari’ Mendoza, one of the protagonists and the voice of this novel, set in El Paso, Texas, at the end of the eighties, does continuously.

Aristotle will meet Dante Quintana, another 15 year old very different from each other but with much in common in essentials. Through short chapters, agile and introspective, Benjamín Alire skillfully portrays his friendship and his struggles with racial and ethnic identity, sexuality, and family relationships.

The other LIJ on the Llibreter list is Muriel Villanueva with Dunes, diary of another summer (Babulinka Books), a book starring Duna, a 14-year-old, which plays and fine many keys: that of gender through the figure of Max, the family relationships with Manel, her mother’s boyfriend, and her young son, the elderly through her grandfather and, above all, in this new installment of Duna’s diary –precede her Dune, diary of a summer– deals with the subject of predatory urbanism and its consequences on the environment, in this case rural.

The Ministry of Culture recently awarded Elia Barceló with the National Prize for Children’s and Young People’s Literature for The Frankenstein effect (Edebé) (of which we have also spoken here) a particular tribute to the work of Mary Shelley in the era of #MeeToo that was also the Edebé Award last year. Who we will still have to wait to read the work is the winners of the Lazarillo Award (one of the oldest and most independent granted), the prolific Jordi Sierra i Fabra, winner in the category of Literary Creation with Like tears in the rain – the story of the teenage daughter of Leo Calvert, a music legend – and Carmen Lopez Lopez with A ghost girl, in the Illustrated Album.

This year the Valencian narrative has been the protagonist of the Crossroads awards. The author and teacher Silvestre Vilaplana has obtained the award Wide angle by The music of the devil, an history about suspense that tells the story of a famous musician whose glory owes much to the devil. In his old age, he plans his death to end his tortuous life, and it will be his granddaughter and heir who must unravel the circumstances of his disappearance. A series of QR codes throughout the book they help in the tracks while giving us the possibility of listening to some of the most diabolical music such as The devil’s sonata of Tartini or the blues Me and Devil de Robert Johnson.

The award Steamboat for younger children it has been this year for the also Valencian author Paula Ferrer by The country of cral. Ferrer, who is also a doctor, puts together a story around a precious material, the cral, a kind of glass highly valued that was extracted from a mine in the small town of Vellamina. There lives one of the protagonists, Gemma, who one day sees a child appear at the gates of the mine, closed tight. It is about Arles, a translucent blond boy who will open the doors of Pedradecal for you, an underground world and unknown where “craletejar” is the least that can be done. Two towns, exterior and interior, interconnected and about which some neighbors know more than they admit.

The real case of a girl who found a distress message on the label of a dress from a well-known fashion brand in 2014, in which someone anonymous complained about the poor conditions of the workshop in which she worked, inspires the Catalan Ruth Tormo in its No barcode (Fanbooks), winner of the Ramon Muntaner Award in its 34th edition. A hard and interesting book about child exploitation and the role of women in some cultures, embodied in Amina, a brave 14-year-old from Bangladesh who one day decides to send an SOS sewn into the hem of a pair of pants.

In March of this year, the winner of the Joaquim Ruyra Award 2019, Born to be brief (La Galera) by Toni Mata, a dystopia that starts bloody, with the slaughter of two million people from the Sadira suburbs. Poor people, workers of the land called the Briefs who feed the survival of the Eternals, the wealthy. And the fact is that the population cannot exceed 10,000 million people. When it is exceeded, it passes the roller (almost literally). And in the middle is Hunter.

And just out of the oven it comes to us Hazelnut earrings (Barcanova) de Montse Homs, awarded with the Guillem Cifre de Colonya which this year reaches the 39th edition. A work that, as in the best fables, a fox will have a lot to say.

And el international scope We echo the books that this year appear in the selection of outstanding books of the International Youth Book Organization, IBBY, an organization that also awards the Hans Christian Andersen Award every two years, which this year has been received by the Swiss illustrator Albertine (see
Albertine, portrait of a LIJ nobel
). Run, Run, Run (Ibaizabal) de Patxi Zubizarreta on immigration, a topic that also runs through Suitcase (Babulinka Books) de Núria Parera; the juvenile Don’t move, Shrew (SM) of Rafael Salmeron López, the poetry of Light paint (Gunpowder Floor) of Pepe Cáccamo, illustrations of Federico Delicado in A long trip (Calendar).

The editorial Ekaré You are in luck since two of your books, which are also for the Spanish public, are on this honor list. Is about find me, from Ana Palmero, a colorful illustrated book that invites the little ones to look for things and The Canaima from Ramon Paris, about the story of a baby alligator.

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