Congratulations to our 2026 Award Winners and Grant Recipients!

We are pleased to share our list of award winners and grant recipients! Our heartiest congratulations to our 2026 awardees and grantees. We are so grateful for your dynamic and meaningful contributions to our field.

We will recognize and celebrate our winners and grant recipients at our upcoming conference in Pittsburgh. We hope you can join us at our Awards Ceremony which will be held on Saturday, May 30, 2026.

We thank all the committees that evaluated submissions and nominations this year. And special thanks to Pete Kunze, our Grants and Awards Coordinator, for his leadership and extraordinary work!

ANNE DEVEREAUX JORDAN AWARD

Kenneth B. Kidd

MENTORING AWARD

Mark West

ARTICLE AWARD (for article published in 2024)

Winner: Hannah Doermann

“Embracing the ‘Silly Teen Girl’: Perpetual Girlhood, Intergenerational Feminism, and the Twilight Renaissance,” Children’s Literature Association Quarterly 49.3, Fall 2024

Honor: Summer Melody Pennell, Angel Daniel Matos,

and Henry “Cody” Miller

“Queer Transgressive Cultural Capital in When the Moon Was Ours,” International Journal of Young Adult Literature 5.1, 2024

BOOK AWARD (for book published in 2024)

Winner:Amanda Greenwell

The Child Gaze: Narrating Resistance in American Literature (University Press of Mississippi, 2024)

Honor:Emily Corbett

In Transition: Young Adult Literature and Transgender

Representation (University Press of Mississippi, 2024)

EDITED BOOK AWARD (for book published in 2024)

Winner:Kristine Moruzi, Beth Rodgers, and Michelle J. Smith

The Edinburgh History of Children's Periodicals (Edinburgh University Press, 2024)

CAROL GAY AWARD

Winner:Irelyn Thomson

“Mid-Century American Conformity and L’Engle’s Suburban Dystopia"

GRADUATE STUDENT ESSAY AWARD, MA Level

Winner: Allie Moore

“'I can't tell them what really happened': Analyzing the Layers of Trauma and Gaps Within Speak: The Graphic Novel"

GRADUATE STUDENT ESSAY AWARD, PhD Level

Winner: Yi Wang

“My and Our Stories:

Intermental Thinking, Identity Formation, and Vietnamerica"

Honor: Delaney Sullivan

“The Ethics of Food Anthropomorphism"

JUDITH PLOTZ EMERGING SCHOLAR AWARD

(for article published in 2024)

Winner: Shicong Lin

“Rotating, Re‐reading, and Reacquainting:

A Critical Investigation of Reversible Picturebooks”

(Children’s Literature in Education, vol. 55, 2024)

Honor: Alexander Claussen

“Enchanting Images: Magic Mirrors and Moving Portraits in French Fairy Tales” (Marvels & Tales, vol. 38, no. 1, 2024)

PHOENIX AWARD

Winner: Deborah Hopkinson

Up Before Daybreak: Cotton and People in America (Scholastic, 2006)

Honor Book:Martine Leavitt

Keturah and Lord Death (Boyds Mills, 2006)

Honor Book: Neal Shusterman

Everlost (Simon and Schuster, 2006)

PHOENIX PICTURE BOOK AWARD

Winner:Antoinette Portis

Not a Box (HarperCollins, 2016)

Honor Book:Amy Lee-Tai and Felicia Hoshino

A Place Where Sunflowers Grow

Translated by Marc Akio Lee (Children’s Book Press, 2016)

Honor Book: Jeanette Winter

Mama: A True Story in which a Baby Hippo Loses his Mama during a Tsunami but Finds a New Mama (Harcourt, 2016)

ASTRID LINDGREN MEMORIAL AWARD NOMINEES

The Cooperative Children's Book Center (USA)

Malorie Blackman (UK)

Luis Soriano (Colombia), founder of Biblioburro

VIVIAN YENIKA-AGBAW GLOBAL SCHOLARSHIP GRANT

Winner: Uchenna Emelife

Global Honor:Herdiana

DIVERSITY RESEARCH GRANT

Vandana Saxena

Project: “Lullabies from Malaysian Estates: Childhood and Mothering under Indenture”

HANNAH BEITER GRADUATE STUDENT RESEARCH GRANT

Anna Merz

Project: “Periodical Studies, Juvenilia, and

Children’s Literature at Eton”

Shuya Su

Project: “How Death Shaped U.S. Children’s Literature Scholarship: Francelia Butler and the Beginnings of a Critical Conversation”

Kajori Patra

Project: “A Brave, New World: Postcolonial, Cold War-Era Anxieties in Premendra Mitra’s Kalpabigyan (Science Fantasy) for Young Adults”

FACULTY RESEARCH GRANT

Johari Imani Murray

Project: “Liminal Bodies, Ancestral Tides and Contemporary Water Concerns: How Black Mermaids in Children's and Young Adult Literature (ChYAL) Function as Diasporic Knowledge Systems”

Arianna De Gasperis

Project: “From the Gamin de Paris to the Ragazzo di strada: Transnational Pathways into Nineteenth-Century Children's Literature”

Christine B. Case

Project: “Archives Visit:

Fred Rogers Institute at Saint Vincent College, Latrobe, PA”

Viola Ardeni and Barbara Myslik

Project: “Would Cinderella Be Your Prime Minister? Young Adult Literature and Political Socialization Between Cultures”

René M. Rodríguez-Astacio

Project: “Queer Latinidades Youth Lens: Analyzing Queer Latine Young Adult Literature”

JUNE CUMMINS DIVERSITY CONFERENCE TRAVEL GRANT

Melissa McCoul

Bincy Mariya N

MICKENZIE FASTELAND CONFERENCE ACCESSIBILITY GRANT

Allison Estrada-Carpenter