Topelius Nominees

Suomen nuorisokirjailijat, the Finnish union of authors writing for children, youngsters and young adults, awards the Topelius prize annually for best Finnish youth novel. If this year's nominees are anything to go by, the "culture was" has truly been won where it counts, in the minds of young readers.

Grafomania reports on the nominees, and four out of the five nominees are described as being fantastic fiction. There is ecological sf, dystopic fiction, paranormal romance, and magical realism. When the one remaining nominee is explicitly mentioned to be realistic fiction, that tells me that different forms of the fantastic are becoming the norm, at least among the youth books.