The Egg is a charming picture book about three friends trying to track the origins of the mysterious egg and facing the questions: What is a family? Where do we come from? The story peppered with dry humour by Sanna Sofia Vuori is a refreshing take on the popular urban stories of diversity and people living in flats close to their neighbours. Linda Bondestam’s illustrations depict unexpected animals in her recognisable detailed style.

Linda Bondestam (b.1977) studied to become an illustrator at Kingston University in the United Kingdom.
Bondestam has illustrated dozens of children’s books for Finnish and Swedish publishers, and her books have been translated into several languages including Arabic, Belorussian, Croatian, Danish, English, Finnish, German, Latvian, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Turkish and Ukrainian. She is one of the most prominent children’s book illustrators in the Nordic countries.
The illustrator has been nominated for the prestigious Finlandia Junior Prize three times, and the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award five times. She has also been recognized with nominations for the Nordic Council’s Children and Young People’s Literature Prize in 2013 and 2021, and the August Prize in 2016, 2019 and 2021.
Bondestam’s collaboration with Ulf Stark on Animals That No One Has Seen Except Us was awarded the Snöbollen Prize for Swedish Picture Book of the Year in 2016, and the Nordic Council’s Children and Young People’s Literature Prize in 2017. Bondestam was also the first recipient of the Vanessa Prize (Vanessapriset) in 2016. Bondestam’s own title, My Life at The Bottom, was a pick for the White Raven Catalogue in 2021.
She has been sitting on chair number 11 in the Swedish Children’s Book Academy since 2019.