Phoenix Award

The Children's Literature Association Phoenix Award recognizes books of exceptional literary merit. First presented in 1985, it is given to the author, or the estate of the author, of a book for children first published twenty years earlier that did not win a major award at the time of its publication but which, from the perspective of time, is deemed worthy of special attention. Since 1989, honor books have also been named.

Submission Period and Key Notes:

• Anyone may nominate a book by the deadline of October 1 of each year.
• The committee meets during the ChLA Annual Conference to prepare the shortlist and begin its final deliberations for the award.
• Be aware, the committee reads two years in advance. So, for example, all nominations for the 2024 award must be received in 2022.
• The award honors a book published twenty years prior. See more detail in the Selection Criteria below.

Nomination Form

Selection Criteria:

• The award goes to a book published in the year twenty years before the annual conference at which it is awarded. The 2024 award, for example, is for a book published in 2004.
  
  
• The book must have been originally published in English. Books do not need to have a minimum page count to be considered.
  
  
• The book must not have won a major award although it may have been a finalist, honor book, runner-up, or commended, whatever term is used. A book is ineligible for consideration if it has won any one of the following awards or prizes:
  • Australian Children’s Book of the Year Award
  • Boston Globe-Horn Book Award
  • Governor General's Literary Awards
  • Canadian Library Association Book of the Year for Children Award
  • Canadian Library Association Book of the Year for Young Adults
  • Carnegie Medal
  • Coretta Scott King Award
  • Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize
  • Michael L. Printz Award
  • National Book Award for Young People’s Literature
  • New Zealand Library Association Esther Glen Medal
  • Newbery Medal
  • Newbery Honor Medal
  • Pura Belpré Award
  • Whitbread Children’s Book Award (Renamed the Costa Book Award, 2006)
  • The Nebula Award (added in 2008)
  • The Hugo Award (added in 2008)
  • Other major awards may be added in future years.

• The book may be a retelling or an edited work, such as an anthology, not simply a reprinting or new edition.
  
  
• The book is to be judged on its literary merit.
  
  
• The book does not have to be in print.
  
  
• The author does not have to be alive.
  
  
• If the Phoenix Award Committee finds no book suitable for the award, it need not be given in that year.
  
  
• A maximum of two honor books may be, but are not necessarily, designated.
  
  
• The award winner is selected two years prior to the conference at which the award is given. For example, the award announced and presented at the 2022 ChLA annual conference was chosen in 2020.

The Children's Literature Association Proudly Announces

The 2023 Phoenix Award Recipient:

Walking the Choctaw Road by Tim Tingle, Cinco Puntos Press, 2004

To open this collection of stories by Choctaw storyteller and author Tim Tingle is to open a gift.

In these oral tales that he was entrusted to document, Tingle traverses the path his ancestors trod in 19th century Oklahoma, Mississippi, and Alabama. From the forced removal known as the Trail of Tears, to the crossing of the Mississippi River into Oklahoma, to the bonds between African American and Choctaw communities, Tingle honors stories from “red people memory.” And from such memory, readers bear witness to what some might deem impossible: an enslaved family becomes invisible to slave patrols as they cross Bok Chitto into Choctaw territory and freedom; Choctaw agents and friends transform into spirit dancers; eighty-year-old men shape-shift into cougars or owls; bones of Choctaw elders fly into a tornado. With these stories and their mingling of Choctaw and Christian tradition, Tingle highlights themes of forgiveness, honor, respect for others, healing, and tenacity. Readers are welcomed into Tingle’s storytelling world where he preserves tales shared with him by Choctaw elders who took his measure and found him worthy of the task. Tingle’s descriptive, rich narrative is infused with Choctaw humor as well as grief and loss; readers are reminded – and some learn for the first time – that despite centuries of attempted genocide, the Choctaw people and their culture live.

 The 2023 Phoenix Honor Book Recipient: