Illustrator and picture book maker Annemarie van Haeringen is the winner of the Max Velthuijs prize, a three-year oeuvre prize for Dutch illustrators of children’s books. This is reported by the Literature Museum, which awards the price.
The prize is named after the picture book maker Max Velthuijs, who died in 2005. Winners of the prize receive a sum of money of 60,000 euros, a certificate and a statue of Kikker, Velthuijs’ best -known story figure. Previous winners of the prize are Mance Post (2007), Thé Tjong-Khing (2010), Wim Hofman (2013), Dick Bruna (2016), Sylvia Weve (2019) and Philip Hopman (2022).
Van Haeringen wins the price for her entire oeuvre. This includes illustrations she made in the work of other writers, such as People with suitcases (2021), written by Sjoerd Kuyper. Van Haeringen also wrote and illustrated picture books, such as the published in 2014 Coco or the little black dress.
Very special feeling
Van Haeringen, who has already won a gold or silver brush for these and other works, says in a response that winning the Max Velthuijs prize is a ‘very special feeling’. “This is a prize for your entire oeuvre, a kind of superlative on top of the other great prizes that I have already won.”
The jury, containing in addition to the last winner Hopman, also Henna Goudzand Nahar, Karst-Janneke Rogaar, Hedy Tjin and Veerle Vanden Bosch, describes Van Haeringen as someone with “unlikely a lot of craftsmanship” who has “an indelible stamp on the Dutch illustrator landscape”.
Van Haeringen herself says about her work: “I think it is really nice to really take children into those books. That feeling that I had as a child, if you read a very nice or nice book and completely drip it. That is very valuable. Fortunately I work for younger children, where a book reading is still usual. Hopefully it will stay that way.”
The presentation of the price is in November.
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