contributor

• Laureen Tedesco   As chair of the Children's Literature Association's Astrid Lindgren Award Committtee, I continue (through June 2021) to oversee our four-member committee's preparation of two researched nominations each Spring for submission to the Swedish Arts Council, to enter our organization's choices of a U.S. and an international author/illustrator or literacy organization in the competition for the prestigious Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award.
  Our carefully constructed nominations, drawing from primary and secondary sources and accompanying a representative selection of literary works or literacy materials, give ChLA an opportunity to showcase writers, illustrators, and educational organizations that impress us. Our nominees then come to the attention of the Swedish Arts Council (the jury for the award), and their names are published on the award website.
  You've already given me Spring 2020 credit forwriting ChLA's nomination of Luis Soriano, a Columbian man who delivers books to remote villages by donkey, and my teammate will edit and extend my draft. The May 15, 2020 deadline was extended because of COVID to August 2020, so the work was prepared for that extended deadline (I've included that researched nomination package in my service documents). I checked the more than 350 bibliography listings for the other team's nomination of extraordinarily prolific American children's author and fantasist Jane Yolen. This spring, for a May 15, 2020 deadline, my teammate will write the nomination of African-American poet Nikki Grimes and I will edit her nomination and cross-edit the other team's nomination of British author-illustrator David Macaulay.
  In addition to applying our expertise in children's literature research to these nominations, the committee prepares a ballot each year of authors, illustrators, and literacy organizations whom the Children's Literature Association might nominate for the follow year's award cycle (We submit nominations a year before a decision is made). Under my leadership, we were able to diversify our ballot through member recommendations and committee contributions, so that our Fall 2020 ballot featured three African-American and two Latino authors among our seven U.S. choices and candidates from the Philippines, Iran, and India among our four international choices.   2018 - 2020