A SELECTION OF COMMENTS IN THE PRESS (1979-2008)
Sierra i Fabra is an exceptionally talented man and with an admirable capacity for work.
(El Correo Español, Bilbao, 25-7-79)
It is a luxury to have one of the best music historians in our times in Spain. His encyclopaedias are real Guinness records.
(Raimundo MartÌnez Criado, El Noticiero Universal, October 1981)
He is one of the few authors who manages to connect with the adolescent mass and cultivates a vital literature as passionate as himself.
(Diario Información de Alicante, 21-7-83)
He is possibly the only great Spanish author of thrillers, in the same line as Irving Wallace or Frederick Forsyth.
(Luis Fernández, Garbo, 19-12-83)
He is the Spanish Isaac Assimov, as has been proved by the success of his trilogy headed by “...in a place called Earth”.
(Manuel Delgado, TVE, 1987)
Not only does he write well. His prose is dense, reflexive, and with a deep philosophy which verges on the religious.
(María Solé, ABC, Madrid, 19-12-87)
His prestige is based on his vast work and one constant point: quality. A tireless worker, always with an outstanding strength which is transferred to the way he writes and his main characters.
(Sonido 1, Feb. 88)
I admire his variety of subjects, his direct style, his vivid prose, his meticulous language and his vibrant pace.
(Antonio García Teijeiro, El Faro de Vigo, 10-5-88)
He is one of the few Spanish writers in the children-young reader’s section and a frequent visitor of the best seller ranking, which are so often full with foreign authors.
(Concha Palacios, El País, 3-9-89)
Dynamic and brilliant, Sierra i Fabra is one of the best in the international panorama of young readers’ literature.
(Christiane Tetzlaff, Rheinische Post, Germany, 9-12-89)
The best thing about Sierra i Fabra is his lively word in pages created from the sensitivity of a musician and a poet, authentique and modernly exquisite.
(Ana Maria Navarrete, El Correo de Andalucía No.90)
He is a man of all trades in literature, for love, with no genre unaccessible for him, who writes with music by Strawinsky or the Beatles, rock or heavy.
(Antoni Capilla, El Periódico, Barcelona, 26-4-90)
In “The young Lennon”, his most popular book to date, I admire his mastery to produce, not only an exceptional book, but a deeply human creation.
(Enrique Pérez, Holguín, Cuba, 23-12-90)
He is a born communicator of admirable fertility that leaves hurricane tracks as he lives his life. A music expert, he is also considered as one of the basic pillars of Spanish detective novels together with Vázquez Montalbán, Martínez Reverte o González Ledesma. The admiration at |his iron will and incredible power of memory that can recall dates, or records makes us all surrender to this human and talkative, but nevertheless “serious” writer
(Ramón Navarro, El Heraldo de Aragón, Zaragoza, 17-2-92)
He is like an explosion of vitality and passion for life, who can easily encapture his audience in just a few minutes thanks to his personal charm. A writer and a man who is anything but indifferent to life, and who fills everything with intense emotions because he has a fine human fibre that beats within him. He has conquered the world that he seems to have under his feet through enthusiasm, alertness and self-confidence. He was born a writer.
(Ninfa Watt, Jesús Maestro, June 92)
He is pure fantasy, love and shelter for the most genuine in literature: the passion for life, a need to feel and the compulsion to tell.
(Isabel Cano, Primeras Noticias, February 1994)
He is an author that proves he knows the world of young people like nobody else.
(Marta Prieto, Diario de León, 22-5-94)
He is an author that takes his “job” as something global and useful, rather than a tool to reach glory.
(Andreu Sotorra, Avui, Barcelona, 6-10-94)
As prolific as entertaining, he moves amongst literary genres and books with information on music like a fish in water
(Teresa Durán, El Periódico, Barcelona, 25-1-95)
He arrived, talked and conquererd. He has an amazing power of communication. He captivates with his expressions, his attitude and his brilliant sentences while young boys and girls watch the character in astonishment.
(M.J.Bruzón, Atlántico, Vigo, 3-3-96)
It is not easy to turn your teenage dreams into good literature the way Sierra i Fabra does.
(Elena EchevarrÌa, Amigos del Libro, September 1996)
He is one of the most powerful and efficient creators on the Spanish literary scene.
(Pablo Barrena, Literal, 11-96)
He leaves an undeletable mark on your soul.
(Paco Abril, La Nueva España, Gijón, 29-12-96)
He is undoubtedly the most brilliant star in Spanish literature for youngsters. Is there any boy or girl who has never read Jodi’s work? If we had to name a classical author for children and young readers, no doubt, it is Jordi Sierra i Fabra.
(José María González Ochoa, Alacena No.28, spring 1997)
His records are astounding: 5 million books sold in 25 years as a professional writer.
(Pablo Meléndez, ABC Catalunya, 1-11-97)
He is the great “crack” for young people’s literature, a tireless machine, one of those rare specimens that appear every other centruy and could write even in the bathroom.
(Oscar López, Qué Leer No.19, February 1998)
No doubt he will be easily compared to Balzac or Simenon for the size of his work. He has produced well over the works of the three most prolific Spanish writers: Pérez Galdós, Pío Baroja and Ramon J. Sender. He is a sensitive and perceptive writer who expresses his feelings in a lyrical or often poetic way. Many of his titles are metaphorical and awake a feeling of something magical and real in the reader
(Anabel Sáiz, CLIJ, March 1999)
A multipurpose professional: an indigenous Assimov.
(Vicenç Pagés Jordá, El Periódico, Barcelona, 25-6-99)
The books by Sierra i Fabra noy only catch your attention because they cover topics which are things that happen every day and the entertaining way in which they are told but also because they are well thought through and it is clear that he knows what he is talking about.
(Pere Martí, El 3 de Vuit, Barcelona, 17-9-99)
Sierra i Fabra is on his way to producing more than the great amount of books written by Lope de Vega with a total of 500 plays.
(Sebastián Moreno and Ana María Pascual, Tiempo No. 918, 6-12-99)
I wish all writers of youngsters literature worked with the same demanding standard as this prolific writer.
(Eva Piquer, Libros-El Periódico, 3-3-2000)
A Spaniard has written a chant to Chile and to freedom through the novel “Víctor Jara, busting the silences”.
(Andrés Gómez, La Tercera, Chile)
His looks humble and his character does not seem to be affected by his vanity, but by his confidence. He has undefeatable determination.
(Trinidad de León-Sotelo - ABC, 19-8-2000)
His numbers of sales, awards and translations seem more like those of a rock star. His personal web page is a wonder of design and information, visited every day by three thousand people.
(Jordi Punti, Babelia-El País, 14-10-00)
You cannot always count on this type of personality (III Cinema and Education Convention) with such an overwhelming personality as Sierra i Fabra, rich in anecdotes and lucid in the analysis of reality.
(Raúl Mercader and Nacho Jarne, Making Off No. 176, February 2001)
The contribution from Master Jordi to spread rock music in Colombia and all of South America is beyond any imaginable measure. His biographies and encyclopaedias have been the Bible to nourish all the generations of Colombian rock fans in the last 30 years.
(Andrés Durán, El Expreso del Rock, Colombia, 27-4-01)
Sierra i Fabra books are good antidotes, both for their historic rigour and for the pace he gives them as well as for his own personal commitment.
(Pere Martí, Gent del Masnou No. 169, May 2001)
His work is complete and stands out for the way they deal with contemporary subjects of interest for youngsters, parents and teachers.
(Amparo Restrepo, El Mundo, Colombia, 19-9-01)
Jordi’s work is starting to become both well known and popular in South America .What is the key to his success? We could say that it is the combination of a number of factors: First of all, its own quality. People are not silly and do not get hooked on a particular author if they feel they are being taken for a ride. Jordiís books are of excellent literary standard. His experience as a journalist, his profiency of language, his gift for narrative have been applied to each one of his novels. They have the same rhythm as a a journalist would give them. Another reason to read his work is its diversity. There is another key to his publishing success: The huge sympathy that young people in South America feel for him. He has the capacity to perceive the problems and expectations of the youngsters, and the faculty to interpret and present them in his novels, both with his characters and in the plots. He is also a simple, emotional, unrestrained, transparent man that does not hide certain temperamental roughness at times when something touches his feelings or produces emotion within him.
(Juan de la Ermita, Café Literario, El Colombiano, Medellín, Colombia, 7-10-01)
Sitting nonchalantly on the table with a small guitar-shaped pin on his chest, this autor of best-sellers, well known in Spain and South America, proves to have an undisputable talent for pedagogy and comedy, while he talks so naturally about its strength.
(Emmanuel Planes, Sud-Ouest, Bayonne, France, 15-2-02)
Jordi Sierra i Fabra shows a deep knowledge of the world as we know it, the world of the young people, their language, movements and thoughts. You can tell that his journeys throughout the world, together with his communicative talents and his knowledge about music make it easy for him to express himself in an exremely attractive way.
(Sara Moreno, Revista Lazarillo, Amigos del Libro Infantil y Juvenil No. 6, 2002)
Vibrant novel-report in the best of Sierra i Fabra styles, a real specialist in the way he develops novels based on reality. Direct text, brief and lively, where the author, apart from presenting a perfect scenario and characters from everyday life, includes his famous, fervent comment on fraternity and peace.
(CLIJ Magazine No.151, July-August 2002)
Sierra i Fabra novels have the ingredients that make them attractive mostly for youngsters, and that is a real talent. As is the way he writes with sensitivity and passion. And more than passion, vitality. As is the talented way in which he creates specific atmospheres and situations where practically everything stops and the actions and tensions fall right on the essential spot in the scene with all its power, producing an emotion full of intensity. As is his talent to create characters that are so well-defined. Sierra i Fabra is an accomplished and skillful master.
(Josep Mª Aloy, Faristol No.44, November 2002)
The fact that the topics he covers form part of what is going on around us should not overshadow his literary qualities. He does not cease to surprise us, amongst other things, with his capacity to deal with different narrative genres, and with the wide range of registers in his literary tone. A broad display that stretches from childlike humour to the most tragic tenebrism.
(Alicia Muñoz, Lazarillo No.9, 2003)
It is the search for precision, efficacy, synthesis and agility that comes across in his literature that makes him reach the young readers like no other current writer, and turns him into one of the most popular writers in our country.
(Pep Molist, Quadern/El País, 19-2-04)
I cannot avoid pointing out Sierra i Fabra’s capacity for recounting fables, which can transport the reader to the most intriguing stories packed with surprises and effective surprises which is actually what anybody would expect from any novel.
(Josep María Aloy, Escola Catalana No.413, October 2005)
The first thing to mention should be his empathy, his huge human quality, which is reveales before his public, he talks loquaciously about his works and his millions of readers.
(RMB - El Telégrafo de Guayaquil, Ecuador - 6-11-04)
Jordi Sierra i Fabra is the first children’s and youngsters’ writer with his own collection in Spain.
(Itsaso Alvarez, El Correo (Bilbao), La Verdad (Murcia) and others newspapers in Spain, 3-1-05)
At least, two things should be attributed to Jordi Sierra i Fabra: First, he is a born worker, someone who, for some time already, writes, not because he needs to, but because this is the way he understands life. The second thing is that what he writes, people read, in the official languages in Spain and in another 20 languages in the five continents, and mainly in South America.
(Xavier Cortadellas, Presencia from 28th January to 3rd February, 2005)
The jury’s Verdict of the International Prize Julio C. Coba 2005 (Ecuador), on Jordi Sierra i Fabra’s novel “La palabra más hermosa” (The most beautiful word), the winner of this award: “After selecting it from the eight finalists who share originality, great inventive capacity and an impeccable use of language and the excellent way in which the main topics are written the Jury, unanimously, has decided to grant the International Prize Julio C. Coba, 2005 Edition to the novel LA PALABRA MÁS HERMOSA (THE MOST BEAUTIFUL WORD), by the writer known ander the pseudonym of Georgina Vila. Several aspects are worth mentioning in in LA PALABRA MÁS HERMOSA: One of them is the wonders of the personal discovery of language and literature as a generator of countless possibilities. The talents that a pair of twelve-year-old twins, one a boy the other a girl, must apply to solve several tests related to word games to obtain the letters that, after combining them correctly, would lead them to find the most beautiful word. This text is also rich in values such as solidarity, hope and commitment, patience, optimistic thinking and confidence. The text captures the readers from the Stara and they interact with the characters, entering the adventure, the game and the search for the solution of the enigmas. All of this written in a clear, agile, entertaining style that keeps the reader interest to the very end.
(Quito, Ecuador, 5th May 2005)
Jordi Sierra i Fabra rescues amazement.
(Diego Agudelo Gómez, El Mundo, Medellín, Colombia, 7-4-06)
He is king Midas of Children and Youngster's Literature.
(Antonio Solano, (Re)Paso de Lengua, 12-6-06)
A perfect control of narrative structure.
(Elisabet Marco, Primeras Noticias nº219, Septiembre 2006)
Jordi Sierra i Fabra sells millions of books in Spain and in the rest of the world because he combines catchy subjetcs with the dunamic style that caracterizes his work. There are drafts, work, sheets of writing perspiration. Always with polemic subjetcs, this Spanish writer shows reality in a fiction environment without a loss of detail wealthness.
(Alicia Dieguez, Revista Etruria nº4, Buenos Aires, República Argentina, Marzo 2007)
The members of the jury have decided to give the National Award to Children and Youngster's Literature to "Kafka y la muñeca viajera" (Kafka and the Travelling Doll) by Jordi Sierra i Fabra, since it is a simple story that touches all possible emotions. For Fernando Marías, a member of jury, "its biggest value is it simplicity, with a huge power to get through into the reader's heart. Both children and adults keep a solidly innocent focus that sticks to the look of any reader".
(Veredict of The National Award for Children and Youngster's Literature, 26th. October 2007)
Jordi Sierra i Fabra has just been awarded, it was about time!, the National Award to Children and Youngster's Literature. Phenomenon, is the autor more reader in youngster's people because conected absolutly with his public.
(Oriol Pi de Canabyes, La Vanguardia, Pg.37, 5 November 2007)
The unexpected presence of Jordi Sierra i Fabra in Spanish Literature can be perceived as spectacular and unique shows.
(Carles Geli, Babelia, El País, 8 December 2007)
I love the novels by Jordi Sierra i Fabra: he speaks yo young people face to face.
(Juan Carlos Paredes, Peonza, June 2008)
Sierra i Fabra has proved a growing excellency in his jop, using a variety of literary registers and more an more singular and effective displays. Eventhough some time ago it was still possible to fit him into a particular gender and style, it has been in the last few years that he was overcome all the straightjackets that had he been assigned and has ended up with the acknoledgement of the critics, as he already had that by his readers.
(Pep Molist, Quadern, El País 31-07-08)
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