Lewis Carroll Shelf Award facts for kids
The Lewis Carroll Shelf Award was a special American award given to books that were thought to be as good as the famous stories Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll. From 1958 to 1979, the University of Wisconsin–Madison School of Education chose several books each year for this honor. These books were meant to "belong on the same shelf" as Carroll's classics, meaning they shared a similar spirit of imagination and wonder.
In 1958, seventeen books received the award. By 1979, seven books were chosen. The last group of winners was quite varied. It included a picture book with no words, The Snowman (1978) by Raymond Briggs, and a story based on a real person's life, The Road from Home (1979) by David Kherdian, which was about his mother's childhood during a very difficult time in history.
Books were suggested for the award by editors who worked with paperback books. They could nominate one book from their company's list each year. The books were then judged using a special tool that looked at things like how real the story felt, if it appealed to everyone, and how well it was written. The main goal was to find and celebrate truly great books among all the stories available to readers.
The award was created by Dr. David C. Davis. He had help from Professor Lola Pierstorff and Madeline Allen Davis. The winners were announced at the annual Wisconsin Book Conference. Many famous authors and illustrators spoke at these conferences, including Dr. Seuss, Maurice Sendak, William Steig, and P. L. Travers, who wrote Mary Poppins.
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Award-Winning Books
Many wonderful books received the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award over the years. Here are some of the notable winners:
1958 Winners
- Beatrix Potter, The Tale of Peter Rabbit (1902) ‡
- Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows (1908)
- Hugh Lofting, The Story of Doctor Dolittle (1920) ‡
- A. A. Milne, The World of Pooh (1926, 1928)
- Wanda Gág, Millions of Cats (1928) ‡
- Watty Piper, The Little Engine That Could (1930)
- Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little House in the Big Woods (1932)
- Carol Ryrie Brink, Caddie Woodlawn (1935)
- Richard and Florence Atwater, Mr. Popper's Penguins (1938)
- Dr. Seuss, Horton Hatches the Egg (1940) ‡
- Rachel Field, Prayer for a Child (1944)
1959 Winners
- Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden (1911)
- Jean de Brunhoff, Story of Babar (1933) ‡
- Kate Seredy, The White Stag (1937) ‡
- Claire Huchet Bishop, The Five Chinese Brothers (1938)
- Virginia Lee Burton, The Little House (1942) ‡
- E. B. White, Charlotte's Web (1952)
1960 Winners
- Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book (1894)
- Elizabeth Foreman Lewis, Young Fu of the Upper Yangtze (1932)
- H. A. Rey and Margret Rey, Curious George Takes a Job (1947) ‡
- Mary Norton, The Borrowers (1952)
- Joseph Krumgold, Onion John (1959)
1961 Winners
- Rachel Field, Hitty, Her First Hundred Years (1929)
- Dr. Seuss, And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street (1937) ‡
- Robert Lawson, Ben and Me (1939) ‡
- Marguerite Henry, Misty of Chincoteague (1947)
- Marguerite de Angeli, The Door in the Wall (1949) ‡
- Scott O'Dell, Island of the Blue Dolphins (1960)
1962 Winners
- Hans Christian Andersen, Thumbelina (1835)
- Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884)
- Beatrix Potter, The Tailor of Gloucester (1903) ‡
- A. A. Milne, The World of Christopher Robin (1924, 1927)
- Holling C. Holling, Paddle-to-the-Sea (1941) ‡
- C. S. Lewis, The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe (1950)
- Leo Lionni, Inch by Inch (1960) ‡
1963 Winners
- Charles Kingsley, The Water-Babies, A Fairy Tale for a Land Baby (1863)
- Kenneth Grahame, The Reluctant Dragon (1898)
- Cornelia Meigs, Invincible Louisa: The Story of the Author of Little Women (1933)
- Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, The Yearling (1938)
- Robert Lawson, Rabbit Hill (1944) ‡
- Meindert DeJong, The Wheel on the School (1954)
- Philippa Pearce, Tom's Midnight Garden (1958)
- George Selden, The Cricket in Times Square (1960)
1964 Winners
- Hans Christian Andersen, The Nightingale (1843)
- Frances Hodgson Burnett, A Little Princess (1905)
- Marjorie Flack, The Story About Ping (1933)
- Ruth Sawyer, Roller Skates (1936)
- Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle in Time (1962)
- Joan Aiken, The Wolves of Willoughby Chase (1963)
- Maurice Sendak, Where the Wild Things Are (1963) ‡
- Jean Merrill, The Pushcart War (1964)
1965 Winners
- Jean Craighead George, My Side of the Mountain (1959)
- Sterling North, Rascal: A Memoir of a Better Era (1963)
- Irene Hunt, Across Five Aprils (1964)
1966 Winners
- Robert Louis Stevenson, A Child's Garden of Verses (1885)
- Marcia Brown, Once a Mouse: A Fable Cut in Wood from Ancient India (1961) ‡
1967 Winners
1968 Winners
- L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900)
- Ruth Stiles Gannett, My Father's Dragon (1948) ‡
- Barbara Emberley, Drummer Hoff (1967)
- E. L. Konigsburg, From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler (1967) ‡
- Jane Yolen, The Emperor and the Kite (1968)
1969 Winners
- Hardie Gramatky, Little Toot (1939) ‡
- Maureen Daly, Seventeenth Summer (1942)
- Lucy M. Boston, The Children of Green Knowe (1954)
- Sid Fleischman, McBroom Tells the Truth (1966)
- Glen Rounds, Wild Horses of the Red Desert (1969) ‡
1970 Winners
- Howard Pyle, Otto of the Silver Hand (1888) ‡
- Oliver Butterworth, The Enormous Egg (1956)
- Elizabeth Enright, Gone-Away Lake (1957)
- Randall Jarrell, The Animal Family (1965)
- Zilpha Keatley Snyder, The Egypt Game (1967)
- William H. Armstrong, Sounder (1969)
- Theodore Taylor, The Cay (1969)
1971 Winners
- Margery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit (1922)
- Sheila Burnford, The Incredible Journey (1961)
- Esther Hautzig, The Endless Steppe: Growing Up in Siberia (1968)
- Rosemary Sutcliff, The Witch's Brat (1970)
1972 Winners
- Virginia Hamilton, The Planet of Junior Brown (1971)
- Russell Hoban, Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas (1971)
- Robert C. O'Brien, Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH (1971)
1973 Winners
- Edward Ardizzone, Little Tim and the Brave Sea Captain (1936) ‡
- Astrid Lindgren, Pippi Longstocking (US 1950)
- Anne Holm, I Am David (1969)
- Gerald McDermott, Anansi the Spider: A Tale from the Ashanti (1972) ‡
- Lynd Ward, illustrator, The Silver Pony: A Story in Pictures (1973)
1974 Winners
No award was given in 1974.
1975 Winners
- Lewis Carroll, The Pig-Tale (1975)
- Alice Childress, A Hero Ain't Nothing But A Sandwich (1973)
1976 Winners
- Glen Rounds, The Day the Circus Came to Lone Tree (1973) ‡
- Virginia Hamilton, M. C. Higgins, the Great (1974)
1977 Winners
- Felice Holman, Slake's Limbo (1974)
- William Steig, Abel's Island (1976) ‡
1978 Winners
- Verna Aardema, Who's in Rabbit's House?: A Masai Tale (1977)
- John Steptoe, Stevie (1969) ‡
- William Steig, Sylvester and the Magic Pebble (1970) ‡
- Natalie Babbitt, Tuck Everlasting (1975)
- Katherine Paterson, Bridge to Terabithia (1977)
- Peter Spier, Noah's Ark (1977) ‡
- Glen Rounds, Mr. Yowder and the Giant Bull Snake (1978) ‡
1979 Winners
- Bernard Waber, Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile (1965) ‡
- Ursula K. Le Guin, A Wizard of Earthsea (1968)
- Robert Cormier, The Chocolate War (1974)
- Laurence Yep, Dragonwings (1975)
- Raymond Briggs, illustrator, The Snowman (1978) ‡
- David Kherdian, The Road from Home (1979)
- ‡ illustrated by the author
