Judith Plotz Emerging Scholar Award

The Judith Plotz Emerging Scholar Award is given annually by the Children's Literature Association to recognize outstanding articles of literary criticism focused on children’s literature by new, never-before-published authors. Please note that while the award will most often be given to the first article published by a given author, eligibility may be determined at the discretion of the committee in certain cases if, for instance, the author has published a single article outside the field of children’s literature while in graduate school. However, authors who have a record of publications in another field will not be considered for the award.

Nomination Form

Submission Deadline:

November 4, 2023

Submission Guidelines:

  • Articles should be submitted online through the ChLA website.
  • The focus of the article should be a literary, historical, theoretical, or cultural examination of children's texts and/or children's culture, although other items may also be included in the analysis.
  • Eligible articles must be the first article published by a given author and must be written in English exclusively by the author(s) or translator(s) whose name(s) appear(s) on the article and must have been published during the year under consideration.
  • Articles should provide new insights into the field, making a distinct or significant scholarly contribution to the understanding of children's literature.
  • Reprints of previously published articles are not eligible.

Past Judith Plotz Emerging Scholar Award Winners:

2023 Award

Winner:  Andrea Hoff for Uncertain homes: Trauma, fracture, and resilience in Roma graphic biographies from the ‘children’s homes’ in the Czech Republic. In M.P. Sanchez & G.V. Fuentes (Eds.), Young Lives in Crisis: Precariousness in Contemporary Graphic Narratives (pp.91-106). Routledge.

2022 Award

Winner: Amy Waite for “Teeming Stomachs and Infinite Spirals: Posthuman Anxiety in Patrick Ness’s The Rest of Us Just Live Here and John Green’s Turtles All the Way Down,”, International Journal of Young Adult Literature, vol. 1, no. 1, 2020.

Honor: Minjin Park for “A Cognitive Approach to the Formal Aspects of Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book,”, Johns Hopkins University Press, ChLA Quarterly, vol. 45, no. 3, Fall 2020, 224-243.

Honor: Adrion Dula for “B(e)aring the Beast: Deformity, Animality, and the Ableist Gaze in French Literary Variants of "Beauty and the Beast,”, Wayne State University Press, Marvels & Tales, vol. 34, no. 2, Fall 2020, 197-220.

2021 Award

Winner: Jennifer Coletta Tullos for "“We Gon’ Fight, Emmett”: Performing Childhood and Innocence as Resistance in Black Youth Slam Poetry." The Lion and the Unicorn, vol. 43 no. 2, 2019, p. 261-281. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/uni.2019.0022.

Honor: Amy Fish for "Dreaming “for Real”: June Jordan’s His Own Where as Youth History." The Lion and the Unicorn, vol. 43 no. 2, 2019, p. 196-214. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/uni.2019.0019.

2020 Award

Winner: Sreemoyee Dasgupta for "Child Labour in India: Literary Representations along the Trajectory of Nation." International Research in Children's Literature, vol. 11 no. 2, 2018, p. 160-172. DOI: 10.3366/ircl.2018.0272.

2019 Award

Winner: Elizabeth Massa Hoiem for “Radical Cross-Writing for Working Children: Toward a Bottom-up History of Children’s Literature.” The Lion & the Unicorn vol. 41, no. 1, 2017: 1-27.

2018 Award

Winner: Cara Byrne for “Every Tongue Silenced So One Voice Resounds: Redefining Zora Neale Hurston’s Legacy in Adapted Picture Books” Children’s Literature Association Quarterly 41.4 (Winter 2016): 365-383

Honor: Katherine Magyarody for “Odd Woman, Odd Girls: Reconsidering How Girls Can Help to Build Up the Empire: The Handbook for Girl Guides and Early Guiding Practices, 1909–1918” Children’s Literature Association Quarterly 41.3 (Fall 2016): 238-262

2017 Award

Winner: Megan L. Musgrave for “Gaming as Civic Engagement in Salman Rushdie’s Luka and the Fire of Life,” Children’s Literature Association Quarterly 40.3 (Fall 2015): 238-256.

Honor: Arielle C. McKee for “The Kind of Tale Everybody Thneeds?: Ecocriticism, Class, and the Filmic Lorax,” Children’s Literature Association Quarterly 40.1 (Spring 2015): 39-57.

2016 Award

Winner: Niall Nance-Carroll for "Innocence is No Defense: Politicized Childhood in Antonio Skármeta’s La composición/The Composition,” Children's Literature in Education 45.4 (December 2014): 271-284.

Honor: Daniel Feldman for "Reading Games in Auschwitz: Play in Holocaust Youth Literature," The Lion and the Unicorn 38.3 (September 2014): 360-380.