Janneke Schotveld
Janneke Schotveld (1974) started her career as a teacher, including for remedial classes, and became hugely popular with her 'Superjuffie' (Super Miss) series. In interviews, she occasionally mentioned that she’d really like to write something different after all those stories about the animal-saving teacher with superpowers.
Futhermore, she’s written three collections of contemporary fairy tales in quick succession. Schotveld won the Hotze de Roos Prize for her debut, Villa Fien, has been selected by the Children’s Jury twice and received a commendation from the Griffel Jury.
More Janneke Schotveld
The Adventures of the Brave Ms Knight
What has gone wrong since the Brothers Grimm recorded all those funny and violent orally transmitted folk stories? Who exactly decided that you have to be a ‘proper’ writer in order to write such stories? The best tales come about naturally at the bedside and are passed on by mums and dads and grandmas and grandpas, weaving together events of the day and things they’ve heard elsewhere to create nonsense stories that aren’t really nonsensical at all.
The King’s Frog Legs and Other Fairy Tales
‘Normal, normal – what is normal?’ replies the fairy when the king asks if he’s going to have a normal child. This is perhaps the key sentence of this sparkling book of fairy tales. Because there’s room for everyone in Janneke Schotveld’s fifteen long stories. Roles are reversed, and there’s no lack of diversity in the words or the pictures: from a lesbian princess to an enchanted headscarf and a black prince who is rescued from his tower by a brave lady knight.