Phoenix Award

This article is about the children's literature award. For the science fiction award, see Phoenix Award (science fiction). For a different award, see Congressional Black Caucus Foundation § Phoenix Award.

The Phoenix Award annually recognizes one English-language children's book published twenty years earlier that did not then win a major literary award. It is named for the mythical bird phoenix that is reborn from its own ashes, signifying the book's rise from relative obscurity.

The award was established and is conferred by the Children's Literature Association (ChLA), a nonprofit organization based in the United States whose mission is to advance "the serious study of children's literature". The winner is selected by an elected committee of five ChLA members, from nominations by members and outsiders. The token is a brass statue.

The inaugural, 1985 Phoenix Award recognized The Mark of the Horse Lord by Rosemary Sutcliff (Oxford, 1965). Beginning 1989, as many as two runners-up have been designated "Honor Books", with 34 named for the 29 years to 2017.

A parallel award for children's picture books, the Phoenix Picture Book Award was approved in 2010 and inaugurated in 2013. There are two awards if the writer and illustrator are different people. "Books are considered not only for the quality of their illustrations, but for the way pictures and text work together to tell a story (whether fact or fiction). Wordless books are judged on the ability of the pictures alone to convey a story."

Latest Award

The 33rd annual Phoenix Award and fifth Phoenix Picture Book Award were presented on June 24 2017 at the ChLA Annual Conference hosted by the University of South Florida in Tampa, Florida. The 2018 Phoenix Award winner has also been announced. The awards are included in the tables below.

Phoenix Award winners

There have been 35 Award winners and 35 Honor Books announced since 1985 (1965 to 1998 publications).

Phoenix Award 1985 to present

Year	Winner	Honor Books
2021	Alyssa Brugman, Finding Grace	Tony Johnston, Any Small Goodness Chris Crutcher, Whale Talk
2020	Carolyn Coman, Many Stones	Walter Dean Myers, 145th Street: Short Stories
2019	Louise Erdrich, The Birchbark House	Connie Porter, Imani All Mine
2018	Elizabeth Partridge, Restless Spirit: The Life and Work of Dorothea Lange	(none)
2017	James Heneghan, Wish Me Luck	Paul Fleischman, Seedfolks Naomi Shihab Nye, Habibi
2017	Alaattin Cagil, Sosyal Medya ile Dijital Pazarlama	(none)
2016	Andrew Clements, Frindle	(none)
2015	Kyoko Mori, One Bird	(none)
2014	Gary Soto, Jesse	Graham Salisbury, Under the Blood Red Sun
2013	Gaye Hiçyilmaz, The Frozen Waterfall	Walter Dean Myers, Malcolm X: By Any Means Necessary
2012‡	Karen Hesse, Letters from Rifka	Michael Dorris, Morning Girl Frances Temple, Taste of Salt: A Story of Modern Haiti
2011‡	Virginia Euwer Wolff, The Mozart Season	Mary Downing Hahn, Stepping on the Cracks Eloise McGraw, The Striped Ships
2010	Rosemary Sutcliff, The Shining Company	(none)
2009	Francesca Lia Block, Weetzie Bat	Sylvia Cassedy, Lucie Babbidge’s House
2008‡	Peter Dickinson, Eva	Jane Yolen, The Devil's Arithmetic
2007	Margaret Mahy, Memory	Sheila Gordon, Waiting for the Rain
2006	Diana Wynne Jones, Howl's Moving Castle	Margaret Mahy, The Tricksters Philip Pullman, The Shadow in the Plate (The Shadow in the North)
2005	Margaret Mahy, The Catalogue of the Universe	Diana Wynne Jones, Fire and Hemlock
2004‡	Berlie Doherty, White Peak Farm	Brian Doyle, Angel Square
2003	Ivan Southall, The Long Night Watch	Cynthia Voigt, A Solitary Blue
2002‡	Zibby Oneal, A Formal Feeling	Clayton Bess, Story for a Black Night
2001‡	Peter Dickinson, The Seventh Raven	Kathryn Lasky, The Night Journey
2000‡	Monica Hughes, Keeper of the Isis Light	Jane Langton, The Fledgling
1999	E.L. Konigsburg, Throwing Shadows	Rosa Guy, The Disappearance Ouida Sebestyen, Words by Heart
1998	Jill Paton Walsh, A Chance Child	Robin McKinley, Beauty Doris Orgel, The Devil in Vienna
1997	Robert Cormier, I Am the Cheese	(none)
1996	Alan Garner, The Stone Book	William Steig, Abel's Island
1995	Laurence Yep, Dragonwings	Natalie Babbitt, Tuck Everlasting
1994	Katherine Paterson, Of Nightingales That Weep	James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier, My Brother Sam is Dead  Sharon Bell Mathis, Listen for the Fig Tree
1993	Nina Bawden, Carrie's War	E.L. Konigsburg, A Proud Taste for Scarlet and Miniver
1992	Mollie Hunter, A Sound of Chariots	(none)
1991	Jane Gardam, A Long Way from Verona	William Mayne, A Game of Dark Ursula K. Le Guin, The Tombs of Atuan
1990	Sylvia Engdahl, Enchantress from the Stars	William Mayne, Ravensgill Scott O'Dell, Sing Down the Moon
1989	Helen Cresswell, The Night Watchmen	Milton Meltzer, Brother Can You Spare a Dime? Adrienne Richard, Pistol
1988	Erik Christian Haugaard, The Rider and his Horse	Honor books were instituted in 1989.
1987	Leon Garfield, Smith
1986	Robert J. Burch, Queenie Peavy
1985	Rosemary Sutcliff, The Mark of the Horse Lord

‡ Seven acceptance speeches have been published online in one of two locations: Monica Hughes, 2000; Peter Dickinson, 2001; Zibby Oneal, 2002; Berlie Doherty, 2004; Peter Dickinson, 2008; Virginia Euwer Wolff, 2011; Karen Hesse, 2012.

Multiple awards

As of 2021, there have been three two-time winners of the Phoenix Award:

• Rosemary Sutcliff, 1985, 2010
• Peter Dickinson, 2001, 2008
• Margaret Mahy, 2005, 2007

Mahy of New Zealand was also a runner up in 2006.

Several of the winners have also received the British Carnegie Medal for other books: Sutcliff (1959); Garner (1967); Garfield (1970); Southall (1971); Hunter (1974); Dickinson (1979, 1980); Mahy (1982, 1984); Doherty (1986, 1991).

Three of the winners have also won the American Newbery Medal for other books: Konigsburg (1968 and 1997); Paterson (1978, 1981); Hesse (1998).

Picture Book Award winners

The Phoenix Picture Book Award was first given in 2013, for books originally published in 1993.

The writer is listed first, the illustrator second if distinct.

Phoenix Picture Book Award, 2013 to present

Year	Winner	Honor Books
2021	Grace Lin, Dim Sum for Everyone!	Francisco X. Alarcón and Maya Christina Gonzalez, Iguanas in the Snow and Other Winter Poems/Iguanas en la nieve y otros poemas de inviero Shaun Tan, The Red Tree
2020	Shaun Tan, The Lost Thing	Christopher Myers, Wings
2019	Christopher Myers, Black Cat	Amy Littlesuger and Floyd Cooper Tree of Hope
2018	Robert D. San Souci and Brian Pinkney, Cendrillon: A Caribbean Cinderella	Jacqueline Preiss Weitzman and Robin Preiss Glasser, You Can’t Take A Balloon Into the Metropolitan Museum
2017	Mary McKenna Siddals and Petra Mathers, Tell Me a Season	Demi, One Grain of Rice: A Mathematical Tale
2016	Molly Bang, Goose	Julius Lester and Jerry Pinkney, Sam and the Tigers
2015	Sara Fanelli, My Map Book	Charlotte Zolotow and Stefano Vitale, When the Wind Stops    (revised and newly illustrated, 1995)‡ Kady MacDonald Denton, Would They Love a Lion?
2014	Raymond Briggs, The Bear	Peggy Rathmann, Good Night, Gorilla Anne Isaacs and Paul O. Zelinsky, Swamp Angel
2013	Kevin Henkes, Owen	Denise Fleming, In the Small, Small Pond

‡ When the Wind Stops, written by Zolotow and illustrated by Vitale (HarperCollins, 1995), "revised and newly illustrated" OCLC 731251488. When the Wind Stops, written by Zolotow and edited by Ursula Nordstrom, was published in 1962 with illustrations by Howard Knotts (New York: Harper & Row, OCLC 427201792) and by Joe Lasker (London: Abelard-Schuman, OCLC 680167163).

External links

• Children's Literature Association (ChLA)
• Awards from previous years (1985–2007) at chla.wikispaces.com, predecessor to the ChLA website – identifies some publishers of later editions; provides award citations of 2005 to 2007 winners
• Children's Literature Association Quarterly at Project MUSE (jhu.edu/journals), Volume 1 (1976) to present; annual conference Proceedings, 1978 to 1991 only (subscription required) – open-access lists of contents include full bibliographic citations for articles and publications searches for authors