The International Institute for Children’s Literature in Osaka is pleased to announce the 2011 winner of the International Brothers Grimm Award: Professor Jiang Feng, Professor Emeritus of Zhejiang Normal University in China.
The award presentation ceremony and Professor Jiang Feng’s commemoration lecture will be held on December 11, 2011.
Jiang Feng has founded the basis for and has contributed to development of research on Chinese children’s literature for a long time. He has also been active as one of the central figures in the field of children’s literature research in Asia.
He began his pioneering research into children’s literature as a lecturer at Zhejiang Normal University in 1952. He put his energy into educating scholars, and in 1979, he founded the first graduate school to confer a master degree in children’s literature, an institution which has produced many scholars and editors of children’s literature in China.
Professor Jiang Feng has written many books, including Introduction to Children’s Literature（1982), a theoretical and practical handbook for the study of children’s literature. It is still in print, having gone through several pressings, and it was the recipient of the first Children’s Literature Research Award in China. It is also used as a textbook in Malaysia.
He consciously started arranging a comprehensive history of children’s literature in China which resulted in: Chinese Modern History of Children’s Literature （1987); Chinese Contemporary History of Children’s Literature（1991); Chinese History of Children’s Literature（1998); and The Development History of Children’s Literature（2007). In addition, he edited the Encyclopedia of Children’s Literature in the World（1992), which evaluated Chinese children’s literature from a global point of view. These books are essential for the basic research of Chinese children’s literature.
Professor Jiang Feng also published the first book on toys in China, On Toys (1992), examining the fact that eighty percent of toys in the world are produced in China and going on to consider the long history of toys in China.
He played an important role in the 10th Conference of the Asian Children’s Literature Association held at Zhejiang Normal University in October, 2010, and has disseminated information on Chinese children’s literature via many international conventions, such as the International Symposium between China and Japan in 1985.