Introduction of greeting card illustrations
Winning Works of the 16th Noma Concours
Grand Prize Wen Hsu “Nadi & Xiao Lan”
Nadi and Xiao Lan are best friends who live and go to school in Panama. Nadi’s family is from Kuna Yala,* and Xiao Lan’s family is from China. One day Nadi invited Xiao Lan to visit her grandmother. They travelled to an island, where there was a big celebration. Nadi’s grandmother told them the story of the Tree of Life and taught them how to cook soup. Back home, Xiao Lan described her trip to her father, who visited and thanked Nadi’s family. He gave Chinese sweets to all the children and told them the story of the Chinese moon goddess.
* An autonomous region on the Caribbean coast of Panama where the Kuna indigenous people live.
Wen Hsu Costa Rica
Born in 1976. Freelance designer and illustrator. BA in architecture at the University of Costa Rica and bachelor of fine arts in illustration at the Rhode Island School of Design in the United States. Contributed several illustrations for books, including children’s books published in Costa Rica and the United States.
About Noma Concours
The Noma Concours for Picture Book Illustrations was organised biennially from 1978 to 2008 by Asia/Pacific Cultural Centre for UNESCO (ACCU). This Concours was designed to discover up-and-coming, adult illustrators, graphic designers and artists in Asia (except Japan), the Pacific, Africa, Arab States, Latin America and the Caribbean, to provide an occasion at which they could present their works widely and to offer incentives for their creative activities.
The International Jury was comprised of well-known editors and illustrators of children’s books from different countries, and the jury members meet in Tokyo and select one Grand Prize winner, two Second Prize winners, ten Runner-up winners and twenty Encouragement Prize winners. The prize-winning works were exhibited in Tokyo and at the Biennale of Illustrations Bratislava (BIB) in Slovakia, ensuring their exposure to a wide audience and generating opportunities for publication. The award-winning works were presented at ACCU’s website, as well as in the catalogue in book format on sale.
The Concours was operated under the Noma International Book Development Fund, which was established in commemoration of the receipt of the first International Book Award in 1974 by the late Mr. Noma Shoichi, the then president of Kodansha publishing company and Vice-President of the Asia/Pacific Cultural Centre for UNESCO (ACCU).
In 1983, the Noma Concours began official exchanges with the BIB, and since then the winning works of the Noma Concours had chances to be displayed in Europe. The Tokyo and Bratislava exhibitions provided unparalleled opportunities and sources of incentive for Concours prize-winners.
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