Article Award

Awarded annually by the Children's Literature Association to recognize outstanding articles focusing on a literary, historical, theoretical, or cultural examination of children’s texts and/or children’s culture. Eligible articles must be written in English exclusively by the author(s) or translator(s) whose name(s) appear(s) on the article and must been published during the year under consideration. Articles should provide new insight to the field, making a distinct or significant scholarly contribution to the understanding of children’s literature. Reprints of previously published articles are not eligible.

Winner: Nathalie op de Beeck for "'The First Picture Book for Modern Children': Mary Liddell's Little Machinery and the Fairy Tale of Modernity" Children's Literature 32 (2004): 41-83.

Honor Article: Eric L. Tribunella for "A Boy and His Dog: Canine Companions and the Proto-Erotics of Youth." Children's Literature Association Quarterly 29.3 (Fall 2004): 152-71.

2003 awards

Winner: Marah Gubar for "Species Trouble: The Abjection of Adolescence in E. B. White's Stuart Little." The Lion and the Unicorn 27.1 (January 2003): 98-119.

Honor Article: David Gooderham for "Fantasizing It As It Is: Religious Language in Philip Pullman's Trilogy, His Dark Materials." Children's Literature 31 (2003): 155-175.

2002 awards

Winner: Jackie Stallcup for "Power, Fear, and Children's Books." Children's Literature 30 (2002): 125-158.

Honor Article: Sharon Smulders for "`The Only Good Indian': History, Race, and Representation in Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House on the Prairie." Children's Literature Association Quarterly 27.4 (2002): 191-202.

Honor Article: Anita Tarr for "The Absence of Moral Agency in Robert Cormier's The Chocolate War." Children's Literature 30 (2002): 96-124.

2001 awards

Winner: Claudia Nelson for "Drying the Orphan's Tear: Changing Representations of the Dependent Child, 1870-1930." Children's Literature 29 (2001): 52-70.

Honor Article: Charles Butler for "Alan Garner's Red Shift and the Shifting Ballad of 'Tam Lin'. ChLAQ 26.2 (Summer 2001): 74 - 83.

Honor Article: Teya Rosenberg for "Magical Realism and Children's Literature: Diana Wynne Jones's Black Maria and Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children as a Test Case,"
Papers 11:1 (September 2001): 14-25.

2000 awards

Winner: Kenneth Kidd for "Boyology in the Twentieth Century." Children's Literature 28 (2000): 44-72.

Honor Article: Karen Coats for "P is for Patriarchy: Re-Imaging the Alphabet." ChLA Quarterly 25.2 (Summer 2000) 88-97.

1999 awards

Winner: Philip Nel, "Dada Knows Best: Growing up 'Surreal' with Dr.Suess." Children's Literature 27 (1999): 150-184.

Honor article: Katharine Capshaw Smith, "Constructing a Shared History: Black Pageantry  for Children's During the Harlem Renaissance." Children's Literature 27 (1999): 40-63.

1998 awards

Winner: Gillian Adams, "Medieval Children's Literature: Its Possibility and Actuality." Children's Literature 26 (1998): 1-24.

Honor article: Naomi J. Wood, "Gold Standards and Silver Subversions: Treasure Island and the Romance of Money." Children's Literature 26 (1998): 61-85.

1997 awards

Winner: U. C. Knoepflmacher, "Kipling's `Just-So' Partner: The Dead Child as Collaborator and Muse." Children's Literature 25 (1997): 24-49.

Honor article: M. Daphne Kutzer, "A Wilderness Inside: Domestic Space in the Work of Beatrix Potter." The Lion and the Unicorn 21 (Spring 1997): 204-14.

1996 awards

Winner: Frances Armstrong, "The Dollhouse as Ludic Space 1690-1920." Children's Literature 24 (1996): 23-54.

Honor article: M. David Westbrook, "Readers of Oz: Young and Old, Old and New Historicist." Children's Literature Association Quarterly 21.3 (1996): 111-19.

1995 awards

Winner: Hamida Bosmajian, "Memory and Desire in the Landscapes of Sendak's Dear Mili." The Lion and the Unicorn 19.2 (Dec. 1995): 186-210.

Honor article: Beverly Lyon Clark, "Domesticating the School Story, Regendering a Genre: Alcott's Little Men." New Literary History 26.2 (1995): 323-42.

1994 awards

Winner: Phyllis Bixler, "The Secret Garden `Misread': The Broadway Musical as Creative Interpretation." Children's Literature 22 (1994): 101-23.

Honor article: Peter Neumeyer, "We Are All in the Dumps with Jack and Guy: Two Nursery Rhymes with Pictures by Maurice Sendak." Children's Literature in Education 25.1 (March 1994): 29-40.

Honor article: Judith Plotz, "Secret Garden II; or, Lady Chatterley's Lover as Palimpsest." Children's Literature Association Quarterly 19.1 (Spring 1994): 15-19.

Honorable mention: Claudia Nelson, "Fantasies de Sicle: Sex and Sexuality in the Late-Victorian Fairy Tale." Transforming Genres: New Approaches to British Fiction of the 1890s. Ed. Nikki Lee Manos and Meri-Jane Rochelson. New York: St. Martin's, 1994. 87-107.

Honorable Mention: Karla Walters, "Seeking Home: Secularizing the Quest for the Celestial City in Little Women and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz." Reform and Counterreform: Dialectics of the Word in Western Christianity Since Luther. Ed. John C. Hawley. New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 1994. 153-71.

1993 awards

Winner: Jerry Phillips, "The Mem Sahib, the Worthy, the Rajah, and His Minions: Some Reflections on the Class Politics of The Secret Garden." The Lion and the Unicorn 17.2 (1993): 168-94.

Honor article: Glenn Handler, "Tom Sawyer's Masculinity." Arizona Quarterly 49.4 (Winter 1993): 33-59.

Honorable mention: Valerie Krips, "Mistaken Identity: Russell Hoban's Mouse and His Child." Children's Literature 21 (1993): 92-100.

Honorable mention: Roberta Seelinger Trites, "Nesting: Embedded Narratives as Maternal Discourse in Children's Novels." Children's Literature Association Quarterly 18.4 (Winter 1993-94): 165-70.

1992 awards

Winner: Margaret Higonnet, "Civility Books, Child Citizens and Uncivil Antics." Poetics Today 13.1 (Spring 1992): 123-40.

Honor article: U. C. Knoepflmacher, "Female Power and Male Self-Assertion: Kipling and the Maternal." Children's Literature 20 (1992): 15-35.

Honorable mention: Judith A. Plotz, "The Empire of Youth: Crossing and Double-Crossing Cultural Barriers in Kipling's Kim." Children's Literature 20 (1992): 111-31.

1991 awards

Winner: William Moebius, "Room with a View: Bedroom Scenes in Picture Books." Children's Literature 19 (1991): 53-74.

Honor article: Mitzi Myers, "Romancing the Moral Tale: Maria Edgeworth and the Problematics of Pedagogy." Romanticism and Children's Literature in Nineteenth-Century England. Ed. James Holt McGavran, Jr. Athens: U of Georgia P, 1991. 96-128.

1990 awards

Winner: Jean Perrot, "Maurice Sendak's Ritual Cooking of the Child in Three Tableaux: The Moon, Mother, Music." Children's Literature 18 (1990): 68-86.

Honor article: Leona Fisher, "Mystical Fantasy for Children: Silence and Community." The Lion and the Unicorn 14.2 (Dec. 1990): 37-56.

1989 awards

Winner: Richard Wilbur, "The Persistence of Riddles." The Yale Review 78.3 (Dec. 1989): 333-51.

Honor article: Angela M. Estes and Kathleen M. Lant, "Dismembering the Text: The Horror of Louisa May Alcott's Little Women." Children's Literature 17 (1989): 98-123.

Honorable mention: Claudia Nelson, "Sex and the Single Boy: Ideals of Manliness and Sexuality in Victorian Literature for Boys." Victorian Studies 32.4 (Summer 1989): 525-50.

1988 awards

Winner: Peter Hollindale, "Ideology and the Children's Book." Signal 55 (Jan. 1988): 1-22.

Honor article: Linda M. Shires, "Fantasy, Nonsense, Parody, and the Status of the Real: The Example of Carroll." Victorian Poetry 26.3 (Fall 1988): 267-83.

1987 awards

Winner: Margaret R. Higonnet, "Narrative Fractures and Fragments." Children's Literature 15 (1987): 37-54.

Honor article: Lissa Paul, "Enigma Variations: What Feminist Theory Knows about Children's Literature." Signal 54 (Sept. 1987): 186-202.

1986 awards

Winner: Mitzi Myers, "Impeccable Governesses, Rational Dames, and Moral Mothers: Mary Wollstonecraft and the Female Tradition in Georgian Children's Books." Children's Literature 14 (1986): 31-59.

Honor articles: Geraldine DeLuca, "Lives and Half-Lives: Biographies of Women for Young Adults." Children's Literature in Education 17 (Winter 1986): 241-52.

Honor article: M. Sarah Smedman, "Out of the Depths to Joy: Spirit/Soul in Juvenile Novels." Triumphs of the Human Spirit in Children's Literature. Ed. Francelia Butler and Richard Rotert. Hamden, CT: Library Professional Publications, 1986. 181-97.

1985 award

Winner: Hamida Bosmajian, "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Other Excremental Visions." The Lion and the Unicorn 9 (1985): 36-49.

1984 award

Winner: Jerome Griswold, "Hans Brinker: Sunny World, Angry Waters." Children's Literature 12 (1984): 47-60.

1983 award

Winner: U. C. Knoepflmacher, "The Balancing of Child and Adult." Nineteenth Century Fiction 37.4 (March 1983): 497-530.

1982 award

Winner: Anita Moss, "The Spear and the Piccolo: Heroic Dimensions of William Steig's Dominic and Abel's Island." Children's Literature 10 (1982): 124-40.

1981 award - no award given

1980 award

Winner: Lynn Rosenthal, "The Development of Consciousness in Lucy Boston's The Children of Green Knowe." Children's Literature 8 (1980): 53-67.

1979 award

Winner: Phyllis Bixler, "Tradition and the Individual Talent of Frances Hodgson Burnett." Children's Literature 7 (1979): 191-207.

1978 award

Winner: Leonard Clark, "Poetry and Children." Children's Literature in Education 9 (Autumn 1978).

1977 award

Winner: Aidan Chambers, "The Reader in the Book." Signal (May 1977).