Winner of the 2025 Nordic Council Children and Young People’s Literature Prize
Rationale
“Do you know what, Mum?”
“No, what’s that?”
“You’re the pier and I’m the boat.”
“Mhmm...”
“And the boat is tied to the pier with a knot.”
This sets the scene for a story that unfolds on a big scale, where the loosened knot becomes the catalyst for a liberating adventure. With Ingen utom jag (Nobody But Me), Sara Lundberg utilises to the fullest the tradition of timeless stories where lost boys and wild babies wander in the land of Vildingarna.
Using barely 200 words, the book flows with colour and form: swirling waterfalls, dancing jungle children, and bright parrots. In the midst of all that wildness, there’s a moment of silence – a child’s outstretched hand and a seed that changes owners so that it too can grow. It is a fantasy to explore on your own or with others, using the ambiguous shapes, patterns, and details that invite interpretation and reinterpretation. Every spread is a work of art!
Sara Lundberg (born in 1971) studied at Konstfack and the Swedish Royal Institute of Art and is a well-established illustrator and award-winning author, including winning the August Prize twice, most recently in 2017 for the Fågeln i mig flyger vart den vill (The Bird Within Me), which also won the 2017 Snöbollen Prize for Swedish picture book of the year.