Grades 1/2
Herr Eichhorn und der erste Schnee
Zilveren Penseel 2008, Netherlands
Mr Squirrel has always slept through the winter. This time he wants to stay awake until the first snowflake falls. Only: what does snow actually look like? White, wet, cold and soft, they say – so the hedgehog mistakes a toothbrush for it, Mr Squirrel a tin can and the bear a sock.
Die verflixten sieben Geißlein
Nominated for the German Youth Literature Award 2018
The wolf dresses up as the mother goat and sneaks into the house. But it is in such a mess that not a single kid can be seen. Before he can eat anyone, he first has to tidy up – and on the busy, crowded pages you search along with him.
“Here the illustrator has let rip with a great love of chaos.”
Roswitha Budeus-Budde, Süddeutsche Zeitung (translated)
Sebastian Meschenmoser was born in Frankfurt in 1980, grew up on the Moselle and studied art in Mainz and Dijon. He draws with pencil, coloured pencil and watercolour and paints large oil pictures, fifty of them for Michael Ende’s “The Neverending Story”. He has been nominated three times for the German Youth Literature Award, received the Zilveren Penseel in the Netherlands and twice made the international White Ravens list. He lives in Berlin – and hides himself in almost every one of his books.
Text and pictures: Sebastian Meschenmoser · Thienemann · age 4+
Grades 3/4 · Join-in reading
Vor meiner Tür auf einer Matte
Every day she is back on the doormat: a huge rat in the best of moods. She sprawls on the sofa and in the bed, pushes in front at the bathroom and the fridge, makes noise and gets on everyone’s nerves until her host finally loses his temper. Then she is gone. And he misses her. The whole book rhymes.
Krake beim Schneider
Two pictures, two lines, a whole story: a kangaroo finally moves out of Mum’s pouch – and two pointed ears peek out of her bulging shopping bag. Tipsy stags, ironing raccoons, sunbathing slugs: animals who look suspiciously like us.
“Nadia Budde’s many talents are unparalleled.”
Elena Geus, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (translated)
Nadia Budde was born in East Berlin in 1967. She first dressed shop windows, then studied graphic design in Berlin-Weißensee and London. Her very first picture book, “Eins Zwei Drei Tier”, won the German Youth Literature Award; ten years later came the second – for her illustrated childhood memoir “Such dir was aus, aber beeil dich!”. She has also received the Hans Meid Prize for book illustration and, in 2025, the Uwe Lüders Prize. Six times she has been on the candidate list for the Swedish Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award.
Text and pictures: Nadia Budde · Peter Hammer Verlag · age 4+ and 5+
She will read one of the two – which one, she hasn’t decided yet.
Grades 5/6 · Reading with live drawing
Die Legende von Artus
Arthur pulls the sword Excalibur from the stone and becomes king. With the Knights of the Round Table he has adventures and victories – until Morgana and Mordred stir up trouble and a betrayal forces him into a decisive battle. Told in short chapters, with comic-like pictures and lots of speech bubbles. And Bea Davies will draw live on stage as she reads.
“Bea Davies’s subtle illustrations, shifting gently between shades of blue and red, never give away too much and invite further philosophising in their very own way.”
Jury of the German Youth Literature Award, on “Himmelwärts” (translated)
Bea Davies was born in Italy in 1990 and grew up in Italy, South Korea and the USA. She studied in New York and at the Weißensee Academy of Art in Berlin, where she has lived since 2012. For her pictures in Karen Köhler’s “Himmelwärts” she and the author received the German Youth Literature Award and the Catholic Children’s and Youth Book Prize in 2025. She wrote and drew her comic “Super-GAU”, about eight lives on the day of Fukushima, on her own.
Retold by Anna Kindermann · Pictures: Bea Davies · Kindermann Verlag · age 6+
Grades 7/8
Wie der Wahnsinn mir die Welt erklärte
German Youth Literature Award 2020 · Korbinian – Paul Maar Prize 2020
Lucie is almost thirteen and needs money to move out of home. So she answers an ad for a far too well-paid dog-walking job. The dog, however, has long been dead, and old Mr Klinge is really looking for someone to write a secret cookbook with him – with dragon heart and werewolf spit. Lucie doesn’t believe a word he says. And cooks the recipes anyway.
“A cracking coming-of-age story, illustrated with just as much punch.”
Katrin Hörnlein, Die Zeit (translated)
Dita Zipfel was born in Kiel in 1981, has sold chips on Sylt, milked cows on Mallorca and taught in North Frisia. Since 2016 she has been writing picture books, plays, screenplays and novels. For her first novel for young people she received the German Youth Literature Award, the Korbinian – Paul Maar Prize and the Kranichsteiner Youth Literature Grant in 2020, and the Hamburg Literature Promotion Prize back in 2017. “Brummps”, her book with Bea Davies, is on the international White Ravens list. Her first novel for adults came out in February 2026 – she reads from it in the evening. She lives in Berlin.
Text: Dita Zipfel · Pictures: Rán Flygenring · Hanser · age 12+
Grades 9/10
WEIL.
LUCHS of the Year 2023
Five teenagers from Berlin head to the countryside to study for their final exams. On the way they pick up a hitchhiker, and because he makes racist remarks, they leave him behind at a petrol station. The next morning he is at the door with two men – and a game of power, violence and fear begins.
“Perfect material for the ethics exam – no, for life!”
Katrin Hörnlein, Die Zeit (translated)
Martin Muser was born in Stuttgart in 1965, studied at the Berlin University of the Arts, worked as a journalist and writes screenplays for television. He came to children’s books with “Kannawoniwasein!” (2018, since made into a film); its audiobook won the German Audiobook Prize. Today he writes everything from first readers to young adult novels – and reads aloud so well that the German Publishers and Booksellers Association named him “Reading Artist of the Year” in 2020.
Martin Muser · Carlsen · age 14+
Content note: racism and violence
