The Phoenix Award Committee and the Phoenix Picture Book Award Committee of the Children's Literature Association are planning a joint session at the 47th Children's Literature Association Conference, held in Bellevue from June 18-20, 2020 and hosted by the University of Washington. The Phoenix Awards recognize exceptional books published twenty years previously that did not win a major award at the time, but that the committees have determined to be of lasting value.

The 2000/2020 Phoenix Award goes to Carolyn Coman for Many Stones (Puffin 2000). The Phoenix Honor goes to Walter Dean Myers for 145th Street (Delacorte 2000). The 2000/2020 Phoenix Picture Book Award goes to Shaun Tan for The Lost Thing (Hachette 2000). The Picture Book Honor goes to Christopher Myers for Wings (Scholastic 2000).

For 2020, this session will take the form of a roundtable rather than a traditional panel to encourage more discussion and interaction among presenters and attendees. Roundtable organizers seek 250-word proposals for remarks of five to eight minutes that focus scholarly or pedagogical attention on the winning and honor books, particularly as they relate to the conference theme of “Sustainability Through Story: Eco-Justice, Children's Literature, and Childhood,” issues of representation, and/or intersection of text We will invite our 2020 Phoenix authors and illustrators to attend and hope that they will join in the roundtable discussion.

Proposals are due by October 1, 2019, to the two chairs: Phoenix Committee Chair Gabrielle Halko ([email protected]) and Phoenix Picture Book Committee Chair Ramona Caponegro ([email protected]).

Authors will be notified by October 10, 2019, if their proposals have been selected as part of the roundtable. Please note that participation in the roundtable does not preclude submitting a proposal for an additional full-length paper on a different topic. The call for proposals deadline for the 2020 ChLA conference is October 15, 2019.