Every year, about 7,500 titles appear on the German-language children's and youth book market. The German Youth Literature Award offers help with orientation. Prof. Dr. Iris Kruse, Institute for German and Comparative Literature at the University of Paderborn, is the chairperson of the jury of critics who awarded outstanding works of children's and young people's literature at the Frankfurt Book Fair on 20 October. The prize, which is endowed with a total of 72,000 euros, is sponsored by the Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth and organised by the Working Group for Youth Literature.
Winning titles are an appeal for diversity
The nine-member jury team around Kruse nominates six different titles in each of the categories picture books, children's books, youth books and non-fiction books. In a final meeting, the panel of experts, which is made up of people from different professional fields, selects the prize winners. "The moderation of literary conversations is something that plays an important role in the teaching curriculum for future German teachers. Adapting this methodological knowledge and skill for literary discussions with experts, in which explicit evaluation criteria must also play a role, is a very exciting challenge," says Kruse about her task as jury chair. The Paderborn professor also knows exactly what makes good children's and youth literature: "We award prizes to books that are outstanding in the aesthetic quality of their text and visual language. Which allow their young addressees to make new and profound experiences with their being-in-the-world with the means of language and images and which have the potential to inscribe themselves sustainably in the self-development paths of young people". About the four winning titles of the German Youth Literature Award 2023, Kruse says: "All of our winning titles are united in a very wonderful direction of commitment, namely in the commitment to discovering, perceiving and feeling diversity. An appeal goes out from them to all of us."
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