The Phoenix Award of the Children's Literature Association International (ChLA), begun in 1985, is given to the author of a children's book first published twenty years earlier that did not win a major award then but is deemed worthy of special recognition for its high literary quality. This volume brings together for the first time the acceptance speeches of the award-winning writers from the first five years the award was given: Rosemary Sutcliff, Robert Burch, Leon Garfield, Erik Christian Haugaard, and Helen Cresswell, with papers about the award-winning books and the honor books by Milton Meltzer and Adrienne Richard and biographies of the writers and bibliographies of their books for children.

Children's book awards have mushroomed since the early twentieth-century and especially since the 1960s, when literary prizing became a favored strategy for both commercial promotion and canon-making. There are over 300 awards for English-language titles alone, but despite the profound impact of children’s book awards, scholars have paid relatively little attention to them. This book is the first scholarly volume devoted to the analysis of Anglophone children's book awards in historical and cultural context. With attention to both political and aesthetic concerns, the book offers original and diverse scholarship on prizing practices and their consequences in Australia, Canada, and especially the United States. Contributors offer both case studies of particular awards and analysis of broader trends in literary evaluation and elevation, drawing on theoretical work on canonization and cultural capital. Sections interrogate the complex and often unconscious ideological work of prizing, the ongoing tension between formalist awards and so-called identity-based awards — all the more urgent in light of the "We Need Diverse Books" campaign — the ever-morphing forms and parameters of prizing, and scholarly practices of prizing. Among the many awards discussed are the Pura Belpré Medal, the Inky Awards, the Canada Governor General Literary Award, the Printz Award, the Best Animated Feature Oscar, the Phoenix Award, and the John Newbery Medal, giving due attention to prizes for fiction as well as for non-fiction, poetry, and film. This volume will interest scholars in literary and cultural studies, social history, book history, sociology, education, library and information science, and anyone concerned with children's literature.

Children's book awards have mushroomed since the early twentieth-century and especially since the 1960s, when literary prizing became a favored strategy for both commercial promotion and canon-making. There are over 300 awards for English-language titles alone, but despite the profound impact of children’s book awards, scholars have paid relatively little attention to them. This book is the first scholarly volume devoted to the analysis of Anglophone children's book awards in historical and cultural context. With attention to both political and aesthetic concerns, the book offers original and diverse scholarship on prizing practices and their consequences in Australia, Canada, and especially the United States. Contributors offer both case studies of particular awards and analysis of broader trends in literary evaluation and elevation, drawing on theoretical work on canonization and cultural capital. Sections interrogate the complex and often unconscious ideological work of prizing, the ongoing tension between formalist awards and so-called identity-based awards — all the more urgent in light of the "We Need Diverse Books" campaign — the ever-morphing forms and parameters of prizing, and scholarly practices of prizing. Among the many awards discussed are the Pura Belpré Medal, the Inky Awards, the Canada Governor General Literary Award, the Printz Award, the Best Animated Feature Oscar, the Phoenix Award, and the John Newbery Medal, giving due attention to prizes for fiction as well as for non-fiction, poetry, and film. This volume will interest scholars in literary and cultural studies, social history, book history, sociology, education, library and information science, and anyone concerned with children's literature.

Contributors offer different perspectives on advertising, girls' book series, rap music, realistic fiction, dolls, and movies, and demonstrate how images of the child reflect the entire culture. Subjects include female and male sex roles in teen romances, images of children in horror novels, and board games and the socialization of young adolescents. Paper edition (unseen), $25.95. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Written for librarians, teachers, and researchers, this is the second five-year supplement to the authors' Dictionary of American Children's Fiction, 1960-1984 (Greenwood, 1986). Its 567 entries cover 189 award-winning children's books by 136 authors published from 1990 to 1994. Included are concise critical reviews of novels, biographical profiles of authors, and descriptions of memorable characters. An appendix lists books by the awards they have won, and an extensive index allows complete access to the wealth of material contained within this reference work. Included are alphabetically arranged entries for those works that critics have singled out to receive awards or have placed on citation lists during the five years covered by the volume. The reference also contains biographical entries for leading authors of children's fiction, with entries focusing on how the author's life relates to children's literature and to particular works in this dictionary. The volume provides a list of awards, along with an appendix classifying individual works by the awards they have won. An extensive index provides full access to the wealth of information in this book.