Taiwanese illustrator Fifi Kuo (郭飛飛) is among 20 nominees for this year’s Klaus Flugge Prize for the most exciting newcomer in children’s book illustrators.
Kuo, 29, was nominated for her debut picture book, I Can Fly, which was published in September last year, and tells the story of a little penguin who is jealous of birds that can fly.
It repeatedly tries to take to the sky, only to fall flat on its stomach. It is not until it falls into the ocean that the penguin realizes it belongs in the water, not the sky.
Kuo said she often tends to head down blind alleys, and the book was a reminder that most things have two sides and that one’s state of mind can change when things are seen from different angles.
The ￡5,000 (US$6,400) Flugge prize was established in 2016 to honor German-born Klaus Flugge, who moved to the US and later founded Andersen Press in London in 1976, naming it after Hans Christian Andersen.
The company specializes in picture books and children’s fiction, and Flugge launched the careers of several highly praised illustrators.
A shortlist of nominees is to be released at a ceremony in London on May 15, and the winner is to be announced on Sept. 11.
Flugge prize jury chair Julia Eccleshare said this year’s nominees represent a variety of styles.
“There are books that explore complex feelings or allow readers to work through their fears; and then there are those that will make them laugh out loud. Once again the list of illustrators is international, proof that illustration is a universal language,” she said.
Kuo’s next book, The Perfect Sofa, is due to be published in April.
Taiwanese can file complaints with the Tourism Administration to report travel agencies if their activities caused termination of a person’s citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday, after a podcaster highlighted a case in which a person’s citizenship was canceled for receiving a single-use Chinese passport to enter Russia. The council is aware of incidents in which people who signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of Russia were told they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, Chiu told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei. However, the travel agencies actually applied
Japanese footwear brand Onitsuka Tiger today issued a public apology and said it has suspended an employee amid allegations that the staff member discriminated against a Vietnamese customer at its Taipei 101 store. Posting on the social media platform Threads yesterday, a user said that an employee at the store said that “those shoes are very expensive” when her friend, who is a migrant worker from Vietnam, asked for assistance. The employee then ignored her until she asked again, to which she replied: "We don't have a size 37." The post had amassed nearly 26,000 likes and 916 comments as of this
New measures aimed at making Taiwan more attractive to foreign professionals came into effect this month, the National Development Council said yesterday. Among the changes, international students at Taiwanese universities would be able to work in Taiwan without a work permit in the two years after they graduate, explainer materials provided by the council said. In addition, foreign nationals who graduated from one of the world’s top 200 universities within the past five years can also apply for a two-year open work permit. Previously, those graduates would have needed to apply for a work permit using point-based criteria or have a Taiwanese company
The Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday indicted two Taiwanese and issued a wanted notice for Pete Liu (劉作虎), founder of Shenzhen-based smartphone manufacturer OnePlus Technology Co (萬普拉斯科技), for allegedly contravening the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例) by poaching 70 engineers in Taiwan. Liu allegedly traveled to Taiwan at the end of 2014 and met with a Taiwanese man surnamed Lin (林) to discuss establishing a mobile software research and development (R&D) team in Taiwan, prosecutors said. Without approval from the government, Lin, following Liu’s instructions, recruited more than 70 software
RSS