| Josip Vandot | |
| Birth Date: | 1884 1, df=yes |
| Birth Place: | Kranjska Gora, Carniola, Austria-Hungary |
| Death Place: | Trnjanski Kuti, Independent State of Croatia |
| Occupation: | Writer, poet |
| Nationality: | Slovene |
Josip Vandot (15 January 1884 – 11 July 1944) was a Slovene writer and poet who wrote mainly for young readers.
Vandot was born in Kranjska Gora in Upper Carniola, then part of Austria-Hungary, now in Slovenia. Under the interwar Kingdom of Yugoslavia, he was employed as a railway official in Maribor. In 1941, after the area was annexed by Germany, Vandot was deported to Croatia. He was killed in the Allied bombing of Slavonski Brod in 1944.[1] A street is now named for him in Kranjska Gora.
Vandot is best known for the creation of the character Kekec, a brave and clever shepherd boy from the highlands of his home region, the Karawanks and Julian Alps. He wrote three books with Kekec as the main character:
The Kekec books were adapted into three films about the character, although only the first was a direct adaptation of the first book: