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Japanese author Nahoko Uehashi and Brazilian illustrator Roger Mello have won the 2014 Hans Christian Andersen Award.
Uehashi saw off competition from five other shortlisted authors, including Austrian Renate Welsh and Iranian Houshang Moradi Kermani, while Mello beat five shortlisted illustrators, who included Rotraut Susanne Berner from Germany and Eva Lindstrom from Sweden.
The awards were presented by the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY), a non-profit organisation that represents an international network of people who are committed to bringing books and children together.
The Hans Christian Andersen Award is given biennially to a living author and illustrator whose complete works have made a lasting contribution to children's literature. The nominations are made by the National Sections of IBBY and the winners are chosen by an international jury of children’s literature specialists.
Her Majesty Queen Margrethe II of Denmark is the Patron of the Andersen Awards, which are supported by Nami Island Inc. A gold medal is presented to the winners at the biennial IBBY World Congress.
Previous winners of the Hans Christian Andersen Award are author David Almond (2010) and illustrator Quentin Blake (2002).
IBBY also announced the winners of the IBBY-Asahi Reading Promotion Award, who are The Children's Book Bank of Toronto and PRAESA of South Africa.
The award was established in 1986 and is sponsored by the Asahi Shimbun newspaper company. It is given biennially to two groups or institutions whose outstanding activities are judged to be making a lasting contribution to reading promotion programmes for children and young people.
The nominations are submitted by the National Sections of IBBY and may include projects from any part of the world. The jury consists of members of the IBBY Executive Committee and the winners receive a prize of US$ 10,000 (£6,000) and a diploma.