The Paris Review

Argentinian children’s illustrator Isol has won the 2013 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, an international prize given by the Swedish government in memory of the Pippi Longstocking author. With a purse of five million Swedish kronor (almost $800,000), it is the world’s biggest children’s literature prize, and has been awarded in the past to Maurice Sendak, Philip Pullman, and Katherine Paterson. The stated mission is to expand interest in children’s books and causes and, somewhat more confusingly, to “safeguard democratic values.” However you interpret that, we can all agree that Isol’s work is terrific: whimsical, fun, and sinister in only the best ways.

• “An Estonian man has returned a library book sixty-nine years late, partly blaming a World War II aerial bombing that damaged the library for the late return.” They bought this excuse; no fine was levied. 
• “Maurice, aged seven, drew the illustrations for ‘They Were Inseparable,’ and his brother Jack, who was twelve, composed the text. The book was dedicated to their sixteen-year-old sister with whom they were both infatuated.” Avi Steinberg on the Sendak family.
• Is this the best palindrome of the year? (Were there others?)
• The Bloomsbury guide to surviving London disasters.
• The nominees for the Women’s Prize for Fiction (née Orange Prize) have been announced. 

Yesterday, My Brother’s Book, Maurice Sendak’s tribute to his brother, Jack, was posthumously published. Says Tony Kushner, “I really feel that the book is a goodbye from him to everybody who loved him—which was a lot of people.”

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