尤塔·鲍尔在2010国际安徒生奖颁奖典礼上的获奖致辞

Acceptance Speech by Jutta Bauer<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,  

Buenas noches senores y senoras!

Thanks to International Board on books for young people for giving the award to me. Thanks to the Queen of Denmark and Thanks to all the people who organised everything here so well.  

Somebody said to me last week: “Oh, you get the Andersen Award. Then you are the world’s best illustrator of this time!”  I felt quite strange and could not agree.  

I think, whatever you do or are, is not just yourself. You are always a part of a whole.  

So I’ll try to show something of that whole, that made me standing here.  

First of all - as a part of the whole, I should talk about my family, of course. For the family is the first and biggest influence of all.  

I’m part of a big family. The youngest of a long row of (mostly) sisters.  

And not a rich family... that may be a line to Andersen.  

When I was at primary school, the teachers went to my parents and said: Jutta has such a gift for drawing, she should take some extra art classes after school! But my father said: Well, she can always have paper and pencils: that is enough.  

I think, it was enough.  

In our basement, there was a huge pile of leaflets - something about safety in traffic for pupils (for my father was an elementary teacher). They had a white backside. I used them a lot.  

Maybe I should feel a little ashamed, that so many pupils did not get their safety instructions.  

But more important it seems to me, that I had parents who sang songs by my bedside, and brothers and sisters who tried to steal the potatoes from my plate. So thanks to them!  

Many of my loved ones are hidden in my books, like my father and Grandma (the angel) in Grandpa's Angel (el angel del albuelo) and of course you will find in my looks, disguised as a penguin, a bear or a child, the  one I love most: My son Jasper. So, thanks to him for joining me here tonight.  

But, when I was young I had other good companions, and they were book characters. They stay in the back of your head the whole life and they will never leave you. My favourites were: Petzi Bear (Rasmus Klump, from Denmark!), Brumm and Brown by the German writer Ida Bohatta and, best of all, Mumin. Until today, I admire Tove Jansson from Finland! Really good characters in children’s stories do a really good job: they help us to carry our cares, problems and emotions. So: thanks to all of them.  

I studied Illustration at the Hamburg School of Applied Art.  I think these schools, in Hamburg or Leipzig for example, are one of the reasons why we have such an well-developed book illustration culture in Germany.  

My professor was Siegfried Oelke. He was often annoyed that I spent more time with political things, such as dispensing leaflets and student strikes, rather than practising my drawing. But once he said: You can do what you want, you will become an illustrator. This optimism felt good, it was holding me. So thanks to him.