Cao Wenxuan, a Chinese children's book writer, bagged the recent Hans Christian Andersen 2016 award during the Bologna Children's Book Fair in Italy on Monday.

Cao is the first Chinese writer to be nominated and to win the highest international recognition awarded to authors and illustrators of children's books.

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"The unanimous choice of the jury, Cao writes beautifully about the complex lives of children facing great challenges," said Patricia Aldana, president of the Hans Christian Andersen Jury.

Cao wrote Bronze and Sunflower, which tells a heart-moving story set during the Cultural Revolution era of rural Chinese villages. He also wrote Dingding Dangdang, a tale of two brothers with Down Syndrome. Aldana said that Cao's works are "deeply humanistic" books that illustrate how life can be cruel to children. 

"Cao is a great example of how writing wonderful prose and telling stories about brave children facing tremendous difficulties and challenges can attract a very wide and committed child readership as well as helping to share a literary tradition in China that honors the realities of children's worlds," Aldana continued.

Cao was born in 1954 and raised from a small rural community in Yancheng, Jiangsu province. He was fortunate to study at Peking University and is now a Chinese literature and children's literature professor.

During his interview with Xinhua, he stressed that people strive to achieve something because they have a background. "And my background is China," he emphasized.

"All of my stories are set in China, all of them are Chinese stories, but at the same time they are the stories of humankind," he said.

Cao's books are creating names around the world and have found avid readers from Britain, France, Italy and Germany.

The prize has started giving awards to outstanding authors and illustrators since 1956 by the International Board on Books for Young People, a Swiss non-profit group committed to unifying books and children together.

The prestigious award is given every other year, and laureates can only receive such honor once in their lifetime.

TagsCao Wenxuan, Hans Christian Andersen 2016, Bronze and Sunflower, Dingding Dangdang, books, children's books