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The Children's Literature Association Proudly Announces the 2010 Phoenix Award recipient: The Shining Company Rosemary Sutcliff (Farrar/Straus/Giroux and Bodley Head, 1990) Around 600 AD three hundred picked Celtic warriors spent a year training and feasting at Edinburgh along with their three hundred shield bearers. This was the “shining company” that set out to repel a much superior force of invading Saxons. Except for one, all of the company died in battle. From this heroic disaster came “The Great Song” or “Y Gododdin,” a famous medieval poem by the Welsh bard Aneirin in which the deeds of every single one of the three hundred are set forth. Rosemary Sutcliff’s Shining Company retells the events—increasingly ominous and irrevocable—in the voice of Prosper, a young shield bearer, whose life begins in a narrow Welsh valley and ends, through the dislocations of a tragic war, in Constantinople. One of the last of Rosemary Sutcliff’s more than fifty historical novels, The Shining Company evinces her characteristic awareness of the fragility of human culture. Phoenix Award The Children's Literature Association, an organization of teachers, scholars, librarians, editors, writers, illustrators, and parents interested in encouraging the serious study of children's literature, created the Phoenix Award as an outgrowth of the Association's Touchstones Committee. The award, given to a book originally published in the English language, is intended to recognize books of high literary merit. The Phoenix Award is named after the fabled bird who rose from its ashes with renewed life and beauty. Phoenix books also rise from the ashes of neglect and obscurity and once again touch the imaginations and enrich the lives of those who read them. The recipient of the Phoenix Award has been chosen each year since 1985 by an elected committee of ChLA members that considers nominations made by members and others interested in promoting high critical standards in literature for children. Honor books were instituted in 1989 but have not been named every year The Phoenix Award was designed by Caldecott-winning illustrator Trina Schart Hyman. The magical Phoenix on the award statue was specifically drawn for ChLA. The design was sculpted by Diane Davis, who was trained at the Johnson Atelier and Technical Institute of Sculpture, Princeton. Each brass statue is individually cast and inscribed with the year's winner. In 2003, the ChLA launched an annual electronic journal, The Phoenix Award Papers. Each issue includes conference papers on the year's Phoenix Award book and Honor book, and the acceptance speech (when available) by the award winner. The Phoenix Papers are available exclusively online through the Phoenix Papers page. Phoenix Award Brochure (lists current and past award recipients) Previous Award and Honor Books Recipients Phoenix Award Recipient Speeches
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