2015 Winners
WINNER
 | Seuil Jeunesse, Paris, France, 2009 Frigo Vide Text and illustrations by Gaёtan Dorémus What the jury said This book is as high and tall as a building, like so many of the apartment blocks in the city. The book’s main character is a tenant who lives down in the cellar and finds a solution to solve the problem. He goes upstairs following a logical sequence and knocks on everyone’s doors, offering food together with a cooking project. Then a large round table and a huge cake in the oven suddenly colour the pages. Colour and conviviality stream out of the building flowing into other apartment blocks. Soon there is not enough space so people go out into the street and get lost in a community feasting in a street party. But was it all a dream? Or is the dream about to come true? The book masterfully narrates the value of food in social exchange, a positive story flanking the trend to build communities and live in a community. Its analytical description of the characters and their domestic settings offers a strong and convincing example. Food is a need that brings everyone together and becomes a shared opportunity for us all, like the cake that helps to find creative solutions in the search for happiness. |
SPECIAL MENTIONS
 | Rue du Monde, Voisins-Le-Bretonneux, France, 2012 Une cusine qui sent bon. Les soupes du monde Text by Alain Serres and illustrations by Aurélia Fronty What the jury said This book is a journey round the world through soup, a universal symbol of low-cost cooking. With 75 recipes from 22 countries, boiling hot soups to warm you up on cold winter nights or fresh chilled soups to cool you down on hot summer days, savoury and sweet, coloured with spices, stories of different places and curious details on unusual ingredients. Today as in the past, our homes are filled with the fragrance of soups, a family dish that doesn’t need a lot of attention while cooking: boiling away on its own just with simple genuine ingredients. |
 | Gallimard Jeunesse, Paris, France, 2014 A table! Petite philosophie du repas Text by Martine Gasparov and illustrations by Violaine Leroy What the jury said A table! is a clear focus on the daily act of eating, investigating its cultural, historical, anthropological, social and psychological aspects. In plain language, richly expressed and avoiding the prosaic, the book’s theme is fleshed out by recourse to philosophy and everyday experiences able to restore meaning and value to a daily gesture. By so doing, eating is no longer an individual act but a means of linking up community matters and collective destiny. |
 | Wytwórnia, Warsaw, Poland, 2014 Wytwórnik kulinarny Text by Katarzyna Bogucka, illustrations by Szymon Tomiło What the jury said A kitchen is the starting point of this culinary workbook that leaves lots of gaps to be filled in by the reader interacting to produce the book. Page after page, the reader is invited to take part in a series of activities and become the protagonist of food-linked places, tasks and choices from setting the table and enjoying a convivial meal, to shopping and growing food. The various situations outlined on each page can be customised for individual readers so that doing becomes a sort of reflection on the many facets of our daily food experience. |
 | Junior Gimm-Young Publishers Inc., Gyeonggi-do, South Korea, 2014 The Largest Cake in the World Text by Young-Eun Ahn, illustrations by Seong-Hee Kim What the jury said This is a very ambitious book based on a reconstruction of a historical event that took place in the 15th century. The book explores the little known topic of the great gastronomic culture of the Renaissance. The illustrations are an imaginative depiction of the rigorous science of cooking that thrives immersed in the art, architecture and inventions of Leonardo da Vinci’s age. The majestic recipes, triumphant structures and colours blends with the characters of a fairy tale. Ironically, the last page depicts the central character Leonardo intent on sketching a new project and beside him we see the barely visible outline of The Last Supper. |
