Winner of the ALMA Award 2011: Shaun Tan.

This year’s winner of the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award is the Australian illustrator behind books such as books like “The rabbits,” “The lost thing,” “The Red Tree” 

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  Australian Shaun Tan, born in 1974, is the winner of the 2011 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award. “I have yet to take it in,” he said upon receiving the news. “I hope this will make my books more famous in Europe.” Incidentally, Tan won an Oscar this year for his short animated film “The Lost Thing.”

• The Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award (the ALMA) is an international children's literature award established by the Swedish government in 2002 in honor of the Swedish children's books author Astrid Lindgren. The prize is awarded annually for an amount of five million SEK.

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  Shaun Tan’s “The Arrival” captures the displacement and awe with which immigrants respond to their new surroundings in this wordless graphic novel.

• This year’s winner is Australian illustrator Shaun Tan, famous for books like “The rabbits,” “The lost thing,” “The Red Tree” and “Tales from Outer Suburbia.”

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• According to the jury, “Tan is a virtuoso, a visual storyteller and a guide to new possibilities of the picture book. His picture worlds create their own cosmos, where nothing is obvious yet everything is possible."

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  Chairman of the jury announcing the 2011 award. Photo: Emma Jansson

• For more info, see Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award