Book Award

Awarded annually by the Children's Literature Association to recognize outstanding book-length contributions to children's literature history, scholarship, and criticism. Eligible titles must be published, book-length works on the history of and/or scholarship or criticism on children's literature, written in English exclusively by the author(s) whose name(s) appear on the title page, and bearing an original copyright date of the year under consideration. Anthologies or festschriften, reference works, and textbooks; honors papers, masters theses, and doctoral dissertations, unless reworked as a book; and reprints or new editions of previously published books are not eligible. Access links to publisher Web sites for all currently in-print books by clicking on the publisher name.

2004 awards

Winner: Katharine Capshaw Smith for Children's Literature of the Harlem Renaissance. Indiana University Press, 2004.

Honor Book: Karen Coats for Looking Glasses and Neverlands: Lacan, Desire, and Subjectivity in Children's Literature. University of Iowa Press, 2004.

2003 awards

Winner: Claudia Nelson for Little Strangers: Portrayals of Adoption and Foster Care in America, 1850-1929. Indiana University Press, 2003.

Honor Book: Beverly Lyon Clark for Kiddie Lit: The Cultural Construction of Children's Literature in America. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003.

2002 awards

Winner: Hamida Bosmajian for Sparing the Child: Grief and the Unspeakable in Youth Literature about Nazism and the Holocaust. Routledge, 2002.

Honor Book: Adrienne Kertzer for My Mother's Voice: Children, Literature, and the Holocaust. Broadview Press, 2002.

2001 awards

Winner: Clare Bradford for Reading Race: Aboriginality in Australian Children's Literature. Melbourne UP (Australia), 2001.

Honor Book: Elizabeth Wanning Harries for Twice Upon a Time: Women Writers and the History of the Fairy Tale. Princeton University Press, 2001.

2000 awards

Winner: Roberta Seelinger Trites for Disturbing the Universe: Power and Repression in Adolescent Literature. University of Iowa Press, 2000.

Honor book: Valerie Krips for The Presence of the Past: Memory, Heritage, and Childhood in Postwar Britain. Garland, 2000.

1999 awards

Winner: Mary Farquhar, Children's Literature in China. Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 1998.

1998 awards

Winner: Donnarae MacCann, White Supremacy in Children's Literature: Characterizations of African-Americans 1830-1900. New York: Garland, 1998.

Honor book: U.C. Knoepflmacher, Ventures Into Childland: Victorians, Fairy Tales and Femininity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998.

1997 awards

Winner: Ann Romines, Constructing the Little House: Gender, Culture, and Laura Ingalls Wilder. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1997.

Honor book: Margery Hourihan, Deconstructing the Hero: Literary Theory and Children's Literature. New York: Routledge, 1997.

1996 awards

Winner: Ruth Bottigheimer, The Bible for Children: From the Age of Gutenberg to the Present. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996.

Honor book: John Goldthwaite, The Natural History of Make-Believe. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.

Honor book: Maria Nikolajeva, Children's Literature Comes of Age: Toward a New Aesthetic. New York: Garland, 1996.

1995 awards

Winner: Morton N. Cohen, Lewis Carroll: A Biography. London: Macmillan; New York: Knopf, 1995.

1994 awards

Winner: Lois Kuznets, When Toys Come Alive: Narratives of Animation, Metamorphosis, and Development. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994.

Honor book: Gillian Avery, Behold the Child: American Children and Their Books, 1621-1922. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994.

Honor book: Jack Zipes, Fairy Tale as Myth/Myth as Fairy Tale. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1994.

1993 awards

Winner: Elizabeth Keyser, Whispers in the Dark: The Fiction of Louisa May Alcott. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1993.

Honor book: Patricia Demers, Heaven Upon Earth: The Form of Moral and Religious Children's Literature to 1850. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1993.

Honor book: Samuel Pickering, Moral Instruction and Fiction for Children, 1749-1820. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1993.

1992 awards

Winner: Jerry Griswold, Audacious Kids: Coming of Age in America's Classic Children's Books. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.

Honor book: Leonard Marcus, Margaret Wise Brown: Awakened by the Moon. Boston: Beacon, 1992.

Honorable mention: Lucy Rollins, Cradle and All: A Cultural and Psychoanalytic Study of Nursery Rhymes. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1992.

Honorable mention: John Stephens, Language and Ideology in Children's Fiction. London: Longman, 1992.

1991 awards

Winner: Barbara Wall, The Narrator's Voice: The Dilemma of Children's Fiction. New York: St.

Martin's Press, 1991.

Honor book: Virginia Wolf, Louise Fitzhugh. Boston: G. K. Hall/Twayne, 1991.

Honorable mention: Claudia Nelson, Boys Will Be Girls: The Feminine Ethic and British Children's Fiction, 1857-1917. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1991.

Honorable mention: Patricia Demers, P. L. Travers. Boston: G. K. Hall/Twayne, 1991.

1990 awards

Winner: Millicent Lenz, Nuclear Age Literature for Youth: The Quest for a Life-Affirming Ethic. Chicago: American Library Association, 1990.

Honor book: Dianne Johnson, Telling Tales: The Pedagogy and Promise of African American Literature for Youth. New York: Greenwood Press, 1990.

Honorable mention: Gary D. Schmidt, Robert McCloskey. Boston: G. K. Hall/Twayne, 1990.

1989 awards

Winner: Joel Myerson, Daniel Shealy, and Madeleine Stern, eds., The Journals of Louisa May Alcott. Boston: Little, Brown, 1989.

1988 awards

Winner: Kirsten Drotner, English Children and Their Magazines, 1751-1945. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988.

1987 awards

Winner: Julia Briggs, A Woman of Passion: The Life of E. Nesbit, 1858-1928. London: Hutchinson; New York: New Amsterdam Books, 1987.

Winner: Juliet Dusinberre, Alice to the Lighthouse: Children's Books and Radical Experiments in Art. New York: St. Martin's, 1987.

1985-86 awards

Winner: Iona and Peter Opie, The Singing Game. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985.

1981-84 awards

Winner: Neil Philip, A Fine Anger: A Critical Introduction to the Work of Alan Garner. London: Collins, 1981.