THE HAGUE — Illustrator Hedy Tjin on Saturday missed out on the Woutertje Pieterse Prize 2026 in the Netherlands, for which she was nominated together with Gerson Main. The prize is for the best children’s book of the year. ‘All the things that my grandfather secretly is’ by Tjin and Main lost out to the book ‘Atman’ by writer Bart Moeyaert and illustrator Mark Janssen.
The nominees of six books were present during a live radio broadcast in the Children’s Book Museum in The Hague. ‘All the things that my grandfather secretly is’ is Main’s debut as a children’s book writer and attracts particular attention because of Tjin’s colorful illustrations.
“It is mainly the illustrations that elevate this picture book. Tjin has a very characteristic, individual style.”
The main character in this book is a Surinamese boy who regularly visits his old Surinamese grandfather, who is in a nursing home. Grandpa is a fantasist who tells strong stories to his grandson. About how ‘he is a sultan and only has to enjoy himself’. Or that ‘he is the captain of a huge ship, borrowed in a magical forest’. Even when he is in bed and told to rest by the doctor, he looks mischievously at his grandson, thinking: “He’s not fooling me. I know where Grandpa’s thoughts are.”
Fantasy stories Surinamese grandfather
‘When grandpa can no longer tell his fantasy stories, the grandson takes over. Something is passed on across generations and that is quite a beautiful fact, which you have to put into the text yourself, because the story itself unfortunately remains on the plain and fails to touch you emotionally, despite the theme: it is about saying goodbye and death,’ they wrote.
The illustrations, on the other hand, pop off the pages in their colors. ‘It is mainly the illustrations that elevate this picture book. Tjin has a very characteristic, individual style. Her illustrations are made up of large, contrasting areas of color. Her lines are realistic and robust. She works a lot with felt-tip pens, which is quite a striking and therefore original choice for an illustrator. In addition to markers, she also seems to have used chalk and watercolor paint for this book.’
Thanks to Tjin’s illustrations, children with a Surinamese background in particular can emulate the main character, the critics believe. ‘While the illustrations offer children with a different cultural background a window into this Surinamese family. Unfortunately, the text does not have this layering.
Without illustrations, this could well have been the story of Kees from Friesland, or Bart from Drenthe, etc. You could also see this as a strength of the text: all children with a colorful, story-telling grandfather can recognize themselves in it. But the picture book is about fantasy and telling colorful stories without punchlines and without specific origins. For this reason, Gerson Main’s text is considerably less effective than Hedy Tjin’s illustrations.’
Suriname is an important source of inspiration
Tjin has a Surinamese father and Dutch mother. Despite the fact that she lives in Amsterdam, she has a very strong bond with Suriname, where she visits regularly. She has said in interviews that her mixed background and the time she spent in Suriname are an important source of inspiration for her colorful and social artworks and have had a major influence on her use of color and the artistic style for which she is known. In Suriname she mainly made a name for herself in the previous decade with her illustration for Parbode.
She has regularly won prizes in the past. Two years ago she won the Silver Pencil for her illustrations in the book ‘On the back of Bigi Kayman’ by author Henna Goudzand Nahar. In 2022, she won a Silver Pencil together with Brian Elstak for their illustrations in ‘Lennox & de Gouden Sikkel’ by Zindi Zevenbergen and in 2021 she received a Flag and Wimpel for her contribution to ‘Sala & Monk Ons Samen’.
