“Sparklingly good … takes good care of the legacy from Astrid Lindgren”
Anne Cathrine Straume, NRK, 5/6 stars

“Sympathetic and warm … offers a golden read experience with both energy and feelings.”
Maya Troberg Djuve, Dagbladet, 5/6 stars

The Brage Prize jury statement:
“What would we do without imagination?
Goodness, how boring it would be! Imagine how dull playing would be. Imagine how boring the stories would be. Imagine how tedious the days would be. Fortunately, this year’s winner in the children’s book and YA category is far from dull and boring. On the contrary, the author transforms existence from boring to fun, from grey to sparkling – and does so in a prose and a form that meets the child within the reader.

In this book, prose is the gateway that takes the reader from the grey to where it sparkles. Cleverly and wisely, the lock of the familiar is picked, and thus an ordinary everyday life with quite ordinary things is turned into a new and exciting place – both in prose and in action. The images created convey an important insight: if we give ourselves over to imagination, we become a bit crazy. Thank goodness for that!

This year’s winning book is like childhood itself: A good mix of everyday life and wild joy. The winning book nods to stories of the past, to enduring classics from other great storytellers. For if there is something this book overflows with, it is deep joy for storytelling, something the author has fully demonstrated through this and previous publications. Every page is a delight in this book, every sentence brims with meaning, courage, and humor. Old words become like new, and new words are created. Where it is dark, imagination and ingenuity can bring light and laughter into the strangest corners. And when it is dark, it is the stories that save us.”