Annie M.G. Schmidt
Born May 20, 1911 Passed away: May 21, 1995
Meet the author: Annie M.G. Schmidt (Dutch author)
https://www.canonvannederland.nl/en/anniemgschmidt
“Children’s author Annie M.G. Schmidt is a legend in the Netherlands, and her inclusion in the 50-window Canon of the Netherlands is a testament to her Dutch kid lit legacy and hugely successful career. She is the only other children’s author included in addition to Anne Frank. Schmidt began her career writing text and articles for the newspaper Het Parool in the 1950s and it was there that she met artist Fiep Westendorp who helped her produce daily illustrated stories about an impish pair of toddlers named Jip and Janneke. Schmidt soon began exerting her insightful, irreverent influence more widely in Dutch popular culture, a culture she found stuffy and in need of shaking up, hosting a hugely popular radio series about living in Dutch post-war society. She began writing poetry from a young age and creating collections of narrative children’s poems the lines of which many Dutch adults can recite by heart. She found a huge audience for her work when she published her fantasy novel Minoes/The Cat who Came in off the Roof that was turned into an award-winning film. It is still affectionately represented in Dutch popular culture, as well as being an canonical text for classrooms and libraries.
During her long career Schmidt won the most prestigious Dutch children’s literature awards including the Gouden Griffel, awarded annually to the best Dutch children’s book, as well as the Zilveren Griffel, which is awarded to the runner-up each year by the Collective Propaganda for the Dutch Book. In 1965 she won the State Prize for Children’s LIterature. In 1987, she was awarded the prestigious Dutch Constantijn Huygens Prize for her entire body of work, and then in 1988 she received the Hans Christian Andersen Award by the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY), “the highest international recognition given to an author and an illustrator of children’s books” and which is presented bi-annually to an author whose “complete works have made an important, lasting contribution to children’s literature.”–from the Global Literature in Libraries Initiative____________
Books by Annie M.G. Schmidt: https://www.thriftbooks.com/a/annie-mg-schmidt/313738/
The Cat Who Came In Off the Roof
A Pond Full of Ink
