Bjørn F. Rørvik nominated to the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis 2023

Bjørn F. Rørvik's series about Fox and Piglet is one of our big success series, and this autumn they were ready to enter the German market with Spottyitis. We're glad to say Fuchs & Ferkel also have made a splash in Germany, with the nomination to one of the world's most prestigious children's book awards: The Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis.

Fuchs & Ferkel: Torte Auf Rezept has received a new look in German, with Claudia Weikert's illustrations. The original Norwegian edition is illustrated by Per Dybvig. Meike Blatzheim has translated the book to German, and Klett Kinderbuch is the publisher.

Jury's statement

This picture book is a great story on the topic of children’s role-playing games. In the book Fox plays doctor and Piglet is the patient. Instead of being treated with instruments, Piglet would rather be treated with chocolate kisses and lemonade.

In order to get both, Piglets invents Spottyitis. This does however not bring Piglet chocolate kisses, but marzipan cake. Meanwhile, word gets around among the animals in the forest about the sort of therapy the self-proclaimed Fox-doctor is providing, and those willing to be treated come in droves. They are expecting a nice cake meal, but are instead confronted with the painful buffalo injection - the meadow waiting room is quickly emptied.

This is an artfully composed little farce, told in a funny and cheeky way. The anthropomorphized animals invite you to identify and recognize your own experiences with playing. Author Bjørn F. Rørvik succeeds in taking a refreshing look at children's play practices, without being moralising or overly educational. He skillfully blurs the line between narrated play and playful fiction. The dialogue-rich text in Meike Blatzheim's translation is very close to children's language behavior in role-playing games. The four colour illustrations by Claudia Weikert perfectly compliment the wit, verve and liveliness of the text.