Winner of the 2024 Nordic Council Children and Young People’s Literature Prize

With its 18,500 horsepower, “The Fantastic Bus” (Den fantastiske bus) drives right into the heart of the reader with its epic tale about the importance of imagination and community. Jakob Martin Strid has spent 15 years on his 2.5 kilo and 40 centimetres wide masterpiece about Taku, a small grey male bear cub, who along with others from the harbour in the town of Anhstarr City, tries to save Timo. 

It’s a magical experience to flick through the drawings of the bus, as they finally manage to get it to fly. All of a sudden, time seems to stand still in the otherwise breathtaking road trip of a story about the Northern Lights, the North Pole, tundra, The Last Land with abandoned nuclear power plants, and the repulsive octopus dictator who forces children to surrender their birthday gifts. The real protagonist in this work is the bus itself. We follow it as it clatters and rumbles along until, as mentioned, it takes flight. First on the earth, then into the sky.

The work is brimming with references to Claus Deleuran, Richard Scarry, Moebius, and the Japanese animation master Hayao Miyazaki. The illustrations are rich in detail (the mechanics of the bus are portrayed in mesmerising detail) and boast a magnificent colour palette. Strid has a talent for creating an atmosphere in his images, where you can feel the warmth of the community inside the bus, as well as the cold from society and the drizzle outside. 

In typical Strid style, the underlying tone is anarchistic, humanistic, and anti-capitalist. The group’s homemade houses are set to be torn down to make way for new buildings, but in the end, the community triumphs.

Strid has previously been nominated for the Nordic Council Children and Young People’s Literature Prize in 2018 with "Da Mumbo Jumbo blev kæmpestor".