The 11th edition of the Sharjah Children’s Book Illustration Award received a total of 1,300 submissions from 280 artists – 135 of them from Arab countries – and its jury has selected 235 works from 85 artists to compete for the prizes.
The first-place winner gets $8,000, second $6,000 and third $4,000. They will be announced during the 14th Sharjah Children’s Reading Festival (SCRF), scheduled for 3 to 14 May Expo Centre Sharjah.
The Award aims to encourage and promote the development of high-quality illustration for children’s books, in part because good illustration should foster the love of reading. There’s a commercial imperative too: the competition provides a platform for illustrators to showcase their work and connect with publishers.
Khoula Al Mujaini, General Coordinator of SCRF, said the range and variety of submissions suggests the strength of interest in the award. “We hope that the submitted works advance the quality of children’s book production to the level that we aspire to.”
The jury for this year’s edition includes Emirati artist and sculptor Abdulrahim Salem, Egyptian artist Hani Salah, American artist and author Andrea D’Aquino, Spanish contemporary artist Zuriñe Aguirre, and German artist and book illustrator Vitali Konstantinov.
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