5th COMPOSTELA INTERNATIONAL PICTURE BOOK PRIZE:

THE JURY'S DECISION

For the fifth year running, the Education Department of the City Council of Santiago de Compostela and Kalandraka publishers have organised the International Picture Book Prize, as part of the 12^th Campaign to Promote Reading organised each year by the City Council.

These five editions have been a major success, with more than 1,500 different works being presented (256 in this year's edition), proof of how widely recognised the prize is at international level. This year, books have been presented from European countries including Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Denmark, Portugal, France, Holland, Great Britain and Spain, as well as from the USA and Latin American countries such as Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Ecuador, Mexico, Colombia, Uruguay and Peru.

The members of the jury stressed the high quality and wide range of themes covered in the 256 picture books that were presented for this year's prize, from 19 different countries.

After examining all of the entries, the jury finally decided to unanimously award the 5^th "Compostela" International Picture Book Prize to David Daniel Álvarez Hernández and Julia Díaz Garrido, from Mexico, for their book "Parvada". The prize consists of 9,000 euros and the publication of the book in Castilian Spanish, Galician, Catalán, Basque and Portuguese.

The jury highlighted the extraordinary style and quality of the illustrations, using a highly sophisticated technique, and their particularly expressive nature thanks to the use of black and white throughout the book.

The authors of "Parvada" invite readers to reflect on a society that develops in search of knowledge and progress, seeking a better life which is nevertheless based on a major contradiction.

David Álvarez (Mexico D.F.,1984) is a graduate of the School of Design of the Mexican National Institute of Fine Arts (EDINBA). His studies led him to the field of illustration, for which he has received several international prizes: first prize for illustration in the Students' category in the 2011 Latin American Design Awards, organised by the University of Palermo; second prize in the 2011 Catalogue of Children's and Young People's Book Illustrators of Mexico City, and he was also selected for the 2012 ILUSTRARTE Biennial in Lisbon.

Julia Díaz (Mexico D.F.,1986), is also a graduate in Design from the Mexican National Institute of Fine Arts (EDINBA). She has taken part in numerous workshops on the creation and publication of picture books, including sessions with well-known artists such as Gabriel Pacheco, Javier Zabala or Suzanne Zeller.

This year's jury members were the Councillor for Education of the City Council of Santiago de Compostela, Ángel Currás Fernández; publisher and researcher Felicidad Orquín; illustrator Xan López Domínguez; publisher Manuela Rodríguez, representing Kalandraka; the head of the Education Department of Santiago, Xosé Manuel Rodríguez-Abella, and Beatriz Varela, also from the Education Department, acting as the technical secretary.

The jury also recommended the publication of the book entitled "Seré...", ("I will be...") written by Daniela Iride Murgia, from Venice, Italy, which also reached the final.

Special mention also went to the projects presented to the competition entitled "En algún lugar", "El Sanatorio", "Nicomedes el Pelón" and "Aldino, el rábano y la oveja 106".

Previous Prize winners:

The winner of the first edition of the "Compostela" International Prize, which received a total of 335 entries, was Argentinean writer and illustrator Natalia Colombo, for her book entitled "So Close". Out of the 280 entries received for the 2009 prize, Mexican author Felipe Ugalde won with "A big dream". Author Pep Bruno and illustrator Mariona Cabassa won the third edition with their book "The C Family," out of a total of 518 entries. And in 2011, Martín León Barreto from Uruguay won the competition out of a total of 374 entries from 19 countries with his book "Olaj's Journey."

This year's competition forms a part of the Campaign to Promote Reading organised every April by the City Council of Santiago de Compostela and Kalandraka, which celebrates its tenth edition in 2012. The different activities included in the programme, such as story-telling sessions and concerts, presentations in bookshops throughout the city and talks for teachers and families, are directed at more than 5,000 schoolchildren in the area of Compostela.