Sofia Mantouvalou

Sophia Mandouvalou was born in Athens in 1949. She spent a significant part of her childhood and youth outside of Greece. From a very young age, she gained two good friends: Imagination and Humor. It seems that her companionship with them, throughout the years they studied inseparably, devouring desks at all educational levels, helped her understand how important their presence is in the education of life. Her studies in Developmental Psychology, Educational Technology, and Directing convinced her that without humor, imagination, and creative expression, education cannot shape creative and happy individuals. For thirty-two years, she has served television and books, managing to combine the fantastical with the real elements of life, vision with reality. In Educational Television, where she worked from 1979 to 2010 as a specialist in education with new technologies, she wrote scripts that support the school curriculum and the individual and social development of students. She is the creator of at least one hundred and fifty educational television programs for Educational Television, internationally awarded for the series "A Letter, A Story," based on her corresponding poetic work, and scriptwriter of the award-winning educational CD-ROM for teaching Greek as a second language "Diagoras in Olympia" (in collaboration with the Pedagogical Department of the University of Crete), and author of the book "Modern Education and Television." Since writing her first book, her contribution to children's literature includes 70 titles. Her works have been recognized in Greece, Europe, and the International Community and have been translated into English, Chinese, and Korean, with some included as excerpts in anthologies or recommended in elementary school textbooks. Her work is referenced in academic papers for the modern and unique character of her writing. Sophia Mandouvalou also writes prose and poetry for adults. Her desire to bring children closer to literature often brings her to schools and Greek educators. She has participated in many reading promotion programs within and outside Greece through the National Book Center, universities, and international organizations. She has extensive teaching experience in training educators on educational technology, writing educational scripts, creative writing with educational goals, and interdisciplinary approaches to learning through literature. With her insightful view of modern society, Sophia Mandouvalou, alongside her close companions, imagination and transcendent humor, strives to free children from the boredom and stagnation of stereotypical thinking and to offer them, through the core of freedom hidden in her books, the means to think, feel, express, and act with individual and collective responsibility for a better world. Sophia Mandouvalou is Greece's nominee for the 2014 Hans Christian Andersen International Award (IBBY - International Board on Books for Young People).