Awards in South Africa

The Bookchat Awards are back in action. This year with a more attractive certificate than that of 2010. How dare I, a committee of one, make such decisions? Answer: because not enough other people are doing it. Because there is not sufficient recognition in South Africa of good children’s literature.

I admire the awards (and the results) given by Maskew Miller Longman and by Tafelberg (on behalf of Sanlam). These are for unpublished manuscripts – so the motivation is “Send your manuscript to us, rather than any other publisher.” It might win a prize as well as publication. The winning books are usually excellent.

The Alba Bouwer Prys (for writing in Afrikaans), the Percy FitzPatrick Award (for writing in English), the Katrine Harries Award (for illustration) are all national, open awards. Hurray! But there is no money attached to any of these prizes and precious little publicity.

Some publishers have ‘in house’ awards for their own books – two MER Prizes given by NB Publishers, another by LAPA Publishers.

Biennially, the Exclusive Books IBBY SA Award is presented – for an illustrated South African children’s book. Money prizes for author and illustrator, though strangely little fanfare in the shop-windows of Exclusive Books. Anyway, hurray again!

IBBY SA also continues to choose (biennially) South African Honour Books to go on display at the next IBBY World Congress. This means international recognition for author, illustrator, translator (and their publishers). Much to be applauded and desired, though the high honour is not much recognised within South Africa.

For some reason (probably financial) IBBY SA has stopped nominating any author or illustrator for the prestigious Hans Christian Andersen Award. A great pity, as this again is world recognition for our top book creators.

We have had South African nominations (who nominates them I’m not sure) for the hugely lucrative Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award (worth 5 million Swedish crowns). Last year Biblionef SA, Niki Daly and First Words in Print were nominated. Indeed an honour even to be nominated!

There is still no national children’s book award in South Africa. No “Book of the Year”, no medals for author or illustrators, no recognition of those working to promote indigenous children’s literature. Shame! Great shame.

A little extra recognition for our book creators would not go amiss. That is the simple reason for the Bookchat Awards. 

Archives