The author was previously introduced together with Pezhman Rahimi-Zadeh, as candidates for the 2017 Astrid Lindgren Award, which is one of the greatest international prizes in the field of children’s literature.
Referring to his candidacy for the Hans Christian Andersen Award, Hassan-Zadeh said: “This award is granted every two years by IBBY to authors and illustrators of children’s literature, and the Children’s Book Council as the representative of this office in our country introduced me as the candidate in 2018 from Iran.”
He pointed out that paying attention to the children affected by the war, child labor, children in care of bad guardians as well as addressing the issues that have not been paid much attention to in the works of children and young people are among the factors that attracted the attention of critics and experts to nominate him as a candidate for this award.