Beyond Astrid Lindgren: the brand new Norwegian youngsters’s literature conquers younger readers | Culture | EUROtoday

Maria Parr (Vanylven, Norway, 44 years previous) is taken into account within the Nordic nations the inheritor of Astrid Lindgren, however in actuality there are numerous variations between the 2 writers. While the Swedish creator created Pippi Longstocking, a free, disobedient character who broke the foundations established by adults, Parr has created protagonists who, being rebellious, are anchored to actuality. Thus, by means of them, he naturally offers with matters akin to loss of life or mourning.

His newest e book, Oskar and me (Nórdica, 2025), talks about these points by means of the connection of two siblings, Ida, eight years previous, and Oskar, 5 years previous. They share a room, they sleep in bunk beds and, though she loves him, she accompanies him to high school and is attentive to him, on the identical time it makes him determined. “It is a universal theme, but when reading María, who has had brothers, she returns to those moments,” explains Cristina Gómez-Baggethun, physician in literature from the University of Oslo, researcher, critic and translator. She was the one who launched a brand new imaginative and prescient of Norwegian youngsters’s literature in Spain virtually 10 years in the past by proposing to the Nórdica publishing home to translate Parr’s novels into Spanish. “A translator friend told me about this author and, while I was reading Tania Val de Lumbre On a beach in Poland, tears came to my eyes. It was an immediate love,” explains the translator over the warmth of a espresso on the Oslo Botanical Museum.

Nordic youngsters’s literature of current years displays present matters that youngsters are focused on and ask questions on. From the absence of the daddy when a wedding breaks up and the following relationship between mom and daughter when a brand new associate seems within the dwelling, current within the novel Potsby Ingunn Thon, to how a baby mourns the lack of a beloved one and the way his reference figures expertise it, one of many themes of Oskar and me.

How these feelings and moments are transmitted to minors has been key to the success of Parr’s novels. “My greatest interest has always been people: their lives, their feelings, their emotions… and children’s literature is a beautiful place to tell it. I hope that children feel understood,” feedback the creator, in sluggish and calm English, whereas observing the Oslo Fjord by means of the home windows of the Deichman Bjørvika, acknowledged as the most effective library on this planet in 2021.

Nórdica started its line of youngsters’s and youth literature with Parr in April 2016. Since then, its hallmark has been publishing younger Norwegian authors. “María’s success in Spain was immediate because it is a literature that does not avoid deep themes and does so with great tenderness,” describes Jesús Félix, head of the youngsters’s and youth line of the publishing home, which he doesn’t hesitate to explain as followers to the readers who learn his novels. And gross sales verify it.

In Spain, Parr has revealed 4 titles: Tania Val de Lumbre, waffle hearts, Lena, Theo and the ocean (the continuation of waffle hearts) y Oskar and me. In these virtually 10 years, it has bought, in its Spanish and Catalan editions, 32,000 copies. He has received such prestigious youngsters’s awards because the Luchs in Germany, the Brage in Norway, the Silbernen Griffel within the Netherlands and the Prix Sorcière in France. With his newest novel, he participates as a finalist within the Atrapallibres Awards, organized by the Catalan Children’s and Young People’s Book Council and whose jury is made up of youngsters between 9 and 16 years previous.

Parr finds it troublesome to journey. She lives in Fiskå, a coastal city of 500 inhabitants, together with her husband and three youngsters. Her life, like that of Lena, Tania or Ida, the characters in her novels, is linked to the ocean. He began writing very younger. At the age of 14 he already devised the idea of waffle heartshis debut movie. Graduated in Nordic Languages ​​and Literature and an important reader of Astrid Lindgren, on whom she wrote her doctoral thesis, she doesn’t suppose a lot concerning the success of her tales. “It’s something abstract. I’m not very conscious,” he admits, and acknowledges that, if I have been, I would not create the identical. He additionally appreciates that his agent offers him time to write down. In reality, from that first novel revealed in 2005 in Norway till the subsequent one, Tania Val de Lumbre4 years handed.

New Nordic voices

Parr stays crucial creator for the Nórdica publishing home, however not the one one. In current years, new voices have additionally appeared, akin to that of the creator Ingunn Thon (Drammen, Norway, 39 years previous). She, not like Parr, is pure whirlwind, however her literature, which has a contact of vibrant humor, additionally contains the household and the kid as a central axis from which to begin. “I wanted them to feel comfortable, comfortable, and for the readings to push them to another place, to the freedom of understanding that they are not alone, that something similar happens to other children and that they can talk to other people,” particulars the creator in a cafeteria within the Tøyen neighborhood.

Thon’s first novel revealed in Spain was Potsin April 2021. A narrative that was born from a fee and that the creator thought could be the one one as a result of it was troublesome to mix her work as a scriptwriter for tv and radio with writing, however the nice reception inspired her to write down Perfectly imperfectrevealed in 2025 in our nation. In these 4 years, the creator has bought 3,800 copies of her novels in Spain. In this final story, Orion is an ideal and exemplary youngster, however his each day life falls aside when his trainer asks him to make errors. “I am meeting many children who tell me that they identify with Orion, with that self-demand,” he explains in his speedy English. A self-demand elevated by social networks, believes the creator.

Both Parr’s and Thon’s novels have been capable of attain Spain due to the help of as much as 50% for translation granted by Norla, the company for the promotion of Norwegian literature overseas. Their work is crucial in order that works akin to these of the playwright Henrik Ibsen or the texts of the Nobel Prize winner for literature Jon Fosse proceed to succeed in Spanish readers. This is how they’ve managed to get Parr translated into 26 languages ​​and Thon’s novels into 11. Oliver Møystad, advisor to the fiction and kids’s literature part, believes that Astrid Lindgren created “an incredible universe” and that it has survived due to the respect with which she handled childhood, however that new generations have “more complex problems” and want one other sort of literature.

In the subsequent version of the Bologna International Children’s Book Fair, some of the necessary on this planet, which can be held within the Italian metropolis from April 13 to 16, 2026, the visitor nation can be Norway. “We have been preparing for that moment for two years. We have 50 illustrators to make a great exhibition and 20 authors who will travel to Bologna,” says Møystad, in excellent Spanish, in his places of work in Oslo. “It is a great possibility to be visible to the whole world and, yes, María Parr will also be there,” he concludes.