Phoenix Award facts for kids
The Phoenix Award is a special prize given each year to a children's book. This book must have been published twenty years ago and not won a big award back then. It's like the mythical bird phoenix, which rises from its own ashes. This means the book gets a second chance to be recognized!
The Children's Literature Association (ChLA) created this award. The ChLA is a group in the United States that helps people study children's books. A group of five ChLA members chooses the winner. They pick from books suggested by other members and people outside the group. The winner receives a cool brass statue.
The very first Phoenix Award was given in 1985. It went to The Mark of the Horse Lord by Rosemary Sutcliff, which was published in 1965. Since 1989, some books have also been named "Honor Books." These are like runners-up, and many have been chosen over the years.
There's also a special award for picture books called the Phoenix Picture Book Award. This award started in 2013. It looks at how well the pictures and words work together to tell a story. Even books without words can win if their pictures tell a great story!
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Phoenix Award Winners: A Look Back
This section lists all the amazing books that have won the Phoenix Award. It also shows the "Honor Books" that were runners-up. The award has been given out since 1985, recognizing books published from 1965 up to 2003 (20 years before 2023).
| Year | Author | Title | Result | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1985 | Rosemary Sutcliff | The Mark of the Horse Lord | Winner | |
| 1986 | Robert J. Burch | Queenie Peavy | Winner | |
| 1987 | Leon Garfield | Smith | Winner | |
| 1988 | Erik Christian Haugaard | The Rider and his Horse | Winner | |
| 1989 | Helen Cresswell | The Night Watchmen | Winner | |
| Milton Meltzer | Brother Can You Spare a Dime? | Honor | ||
| Adrienne Richard | Pistol | Honor | ||
| 1990 | Sylvia Engdahl | Enchantress from the Stars | Winner | |
| William Mayne | Ravensgill | Honor | ||
| Scott O'Dell | Sing Down the Moon | Honor | ||
| 1991 | Jane Gardam | A Long Way from Verona | Winner | |
| Ursula K. Le Guin | The Tombs of Atuan | Honor | ||
| William Mayne | A Game of Dark | Honor | ||
| 1992 | Mollie Hunter | A Sound of Chariots | Winner | |
| 1993 | Nina Bawden | Carrie's War | Winner | |
| E.L. Konigsburg | A Proud Taste for Scarlet and Miniver | Honor | ||
| 1994 | Katherine Paterson | Of Nightingales That Weep | Winner | |
| James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier | My Brother Sam is Dead | Honor | ||
| Sharon Bell Mathis | Listen for the Fig Tree | Honor | ||
| 1995 | Laurence Yep | Dragonwings | Winner | |
| Natalie Babbitt | Tuck Everlasting | Honor | ||
| 1996 | Alan Garner | The Stone Book | Winner | |
| William Steig | Abel's Island | Honor | ||
| 1997 | Robert Cormier | I Am the Cheese | Winner | |
| 1998 | Jill Paton Walsh | A Chance Child | Winner | |
| Robin McKinley | Beauty | Honor | ||
| Doris Orgel | The Devil in Vienna | Honor | ||
| 1999 | E.L. Konigsburg | Throwing Shadows | Winner | |
| Rosa Guy | The Disappearance | Honor | ||
| Ouida Sebestyen | Words by Heart | Honor | ||
| 2000 | Monica Hughes | Keeper of the Isis Light | Winner | |
| Jane Langton | The Fledgling | Honor | ||
| 2001 | Peter Dickinson | The Seventh Raven | Winner | |
| Kathryn Lasky | The Night Journey | Honor | ||
| 2002 | Zibby Oneal | A Formal Feeling | Winner | |
| Clayton Bess | Story for a Black Night | Honor | ||
| 2003 | Ivan Southall | The Long Night Watch | Winner | |
| Cynthia Voigt | A Solitary Blue | Honor | ||
| 2004 | Berlie Doherty | White Peak Farm | Winner | |
| Brian Doyle | Angel Square | Honor | ||
| 2005 | Margaret Mahy | The Catalogue of the Universe | Winner | |
| Diana Wynne Jones | Fire and Hemlock | Honor | ||
| 2006 | Diana Wynne Jones | Howl's Moving Castle | Winner | |
| Margaret Mahy | The Tricksters | Honor | ||
| Philip Pullman | The Shadow in the Plate | Honor | ||
| 2007 | Margaret Mahy | Memory | Winner | |
| Sheila Gordon | Waiting for the Rain | Honor | ||
| 2008 | Peter Dickinson | Eva | Winner | |
| Jane Yolen | The Devil's Arithmetic | Honor | ||
| 2009 | Francesca Lia Block | Weetzie Bat | Winner | |
| Sylvia Cassedy | Lucie Babbidge’s House | Honor | ||
| 2010 | Rosemary Sutcliff | The Shining Company | Winner | |
| 2011 | Virginia Euwer Wolff | The Mozart Season | Winner | |
| Mary Downing Hahn | Stepping on the Cracks | Honor | ||
| Eloise McGraw | The Striped Ships | Honor | ||
| 2012 | Karen Hesse | Letters from Rifka | Winner | |
| Michael Dorris | Morning Girl | Honor | ||
| Frances Temple | Taste of Salt: A Story of Modern Haiti | Honor | ||
| 2013 | Gaye Hiçyilmaz | The Frozen Waterfall | Winner | |
| Walter Dean Myers | Malcolm X: By Any Means Necessary | Honor | ||
| 2014 | Gary Soto | Jesse | Winner | |
| Graham Salisbury | Under the Blood Red Sun | Honor | ||
| 2015 | Kyoko Mori | One Bird | Winner | |
| 2016 | Andrew Clements | Frindle | Winner | |
| 2017 | James Heneghan | Wish Me Luck | Winner | |
| Paul Fleischman | Seedfolks | Honor | ||
| Naomi Shihab Nye | Habibi | Honor | ||
| 2018 | Elizabeth Partridge | Restless Spirit: The Life and Work of Dorothea Lange | Winner | |
| 2019 | Louise Erdrich | The Birchbark House | Winner | |
| Connie Porter | Imani All Mine | Honor | ||
| 2020 | Carolyn Coman | Many Stones | Winner | |
| Walter Dean Myers | 145th Street: Short Stories | Honor | ||
| 2021 | Alyssa Brugman | Finding Grace | Winner | |
| Chris Crutcher | Whale Talk | Honor | ||
| Tony Johnston | Any Small Goodness | Honor | ||
| 2022 | Julie Otsuka | When the Emperor Was Divine | Winner | |
| Linda Sue Park | When My Name Was Keko | Honor | ||
| 2023 | Tim Tingle | Walking the Choctaw Road | Winner | |
| Richard Maurer | The Wright Sister: Katharine Wright and Her Famous Brothers | Honor |
Authors with Multiple Phoenix Awards
Some authors have been so good that they won the Phoenix Award more than once!
- Rosemary Sutcliff won in 1985 and again in 2010.
- Peter Dickinson won in 2001 and 2008.
- Margaret Mahy won in 2005 and 2007. She was also an Honor Book winner in 2006.
Many Phoenix Award winners have also won other big book awards. For example, several authors also received the British Carnegie Medal for different books. These include Sutcliff, Garner, Garfield, Southall, Hunter, Dickinson, Mahy, and Doherty.
Three winners also won the American Newbery Medal for other books. These amazing authors are Konigsburg, Paterson, and Hesse.
Phoenix Picture Book Award Winners
The Phoenix Picture Book Award started in 2013. It celebrates wonderful picture books that were published twenty years earlier.
| Year | Author | Title | Result | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2013 | Kevin Henkes | Owen | Winner | |
| Denise Fleming | In the Small, Small Pond | Honor | ||
| 2014 | Raymond Briggs | The Bear | Winner | |
| Anne Isaacs, illus. by Paul O. Zelinsky | Swamp Angel | Honor | ||
| Peggy Rathmann | Good Night, Gorilla | Honor | ||
| 2015 | Sara Fanelli | My Map Book | Winner | |
| Kady MacDonald Denton | Would They Love a Lion? | Honor | ||
| Charlotte Zolotow, illus. by Stefano Vitale | When the Wind Stops (revised and newly illustrated, 1995) | Honor | ||
| 2016 | Molly Bang | Goose | Winner | |
| Julius Lester, illus. by Jerry Pinkney | Sam and the Tigers | Honor | ||
| 2017 | Mary McKenna Siddals, illus. by Petra Mathers | Tell Me a Season | Winner | |
| Demi | One Grain of Rice: A Mathematical Tale | Honor | ||
| 2018 | Robert D. San Souci and Brian Pinkney | Cendrillon: A Caribbean Cinderella | Winner | |
| Jacqueline Preiss Weitzman, illus. by Robin Preiss Glasser | You Can’t Take A Balloon Into the Metropolitan Museum | Honor | ||
| 2019 | Christopher Myers | Black Cat | Winner | |
| Amy Littlesuger, illus. by Floyd Cooper | Tree of Hope | Honor | ||
| 2020 | Shaun Tan | The Lost Thing | Winner | |
| Christopher Myers | Wings | Honor | ||
| 2021 | Grace Lin | Dim Sum for Everyone! | Winner | |
| Francisco X. Alarcón, illus. by Maya Christina Gonzalez | Iguanas in the Snow and Other Winter Poems/Iguanas en la nieve y otros poemas de inviero | Honor | ||
| Shaun Tan | The Red Tree | Honor | ||
| 2022 | Allen Say | Home of the Brave | Winner | |
| Lauren Child, illus. by Maya Christina Gonzalez | Who’s Afraid of The Big Bad Book? | Honor | ||
| Mordicai Gerstein | What Charlie Heard | Honor | ||
| Julius Lester, illus. by Joe Cepeda | Why Heaven is Far Away | Honor | ||
| 2023 | Marla Frazee | Roller Coaster | Winner | |
| Yuyi Morales | Just a Minute: A Trickster Tale and Counting Book | Honor | ||
| Jerdine Nolen, illus. by Kadir Nelson | Thunder Rose | Honor |
See also
In Spanish: Premio Fénix de literatura para niños
- Children's Literature Association
