2018 Ms. Tran Thi Minh Tam

In the native country of H.C. Andersen we do not completely understand, why his fairytales find so many readers in faraway countries. Recently we have understood from many sources that millions of school children in Vietnam knows our famous poet quite well, and this Award Committee became interested in getting to know why this could be so. The Danish Embassy in Hanoi could easily explain this to us: the reason being Tran Thi Minh Tam! Her work with H.C. Andersen has stretched over almost 20 years and has resulted in an impressive fairytale-edition published in 2003 with 88 fairytales at first and later 100 fairytales! In different editions these collections have since been published in 16 impressions and another impression is coming in 2018!

This impressive work means that schools all over Vietnam has been able to work with H.C. Andersen – and not just read his fairytales but also use them as an inspiration when working with visual arts, music and drama in school. The young people of Vietnam has thus acquired the fairytales as an entire world for their growing experience.