Prizing Children's Literature: The Cultural Politics of Children’s Book Awards(Children's Literature and Culture)

Children's book awards have mushroomed since the early twentieth-century and especially since the 1960s, when literary prizing became a favored strategy for both commercial promotion and canon-making. There are over 300 awards for English-language titles alone, but despite the profound impact of children’s book awards, scholars have paid relatively little attention to them. This book is the first scholarly volume devoted to the analysis of Anglophone children's book awards in historical and cultural context. With attention to both political and aesthetic concerns, the book offers original and diverse scholarship on prizing practices and their consequences in Australia, Canada, and especially the United States. Contributors offer both case studies of particular awards and analysis of broader trends in literary evaluation and elevation, drawing on theoretical work on canonization and cultural capital. Sections interrogate the complex and often unconscious ideological work of prizing, the ongoing tension between formalist awards and so-called identity-based awards — all the more urgent in light of the "We Need Diverse Books" campaign — the ever-morphing forms and parameters of prizing, and scholarly practices of prizing. Among the many awards discussed are the Pura Belpré Medal, the Inky Awards, the Canada Governor General Literary Award, the Printz Award, the Best Animated Feature Oscar, the Phoenix Award, and the John Newbery Medal, giving due attention to prizes for fiction as well as for non-fiction, poetry, and film. This volume will interest scholars in literary and cultural studies, social history, book history, sociology, education, library and information science, and anyone concerned with children's literature.

Table of Contents:
Contents Acknowledgements A Prize-Losing Introduction Kenneth B. Kidd & Joseph T. Thomas, Jr. Chapter I: Prizing National and Transnational: Australian Texts in the Printz Award Clare Bradford Chapter II: Prizing the Unrecognized: Systems of Value, Visibility, and the First World in International and Translated Children’s Texts Abbie Ventura Chapter III: The Guys Are the Prize: Adolescent Fiction, Masculinity, and the Political Unconscious of Australian Book Awards Erica Hateley Chapter IV: How Award-Winning Children’s Nonfiction Complicates Stereotypes Joe Sutliff Sanders, Katlyn M. Avritt, Kynsey M. Creel, & Charlie C. Lynn Chapter V: The Last Bastion of Aesthetics? Formalism and the Rhetoric of Excellence in Children’s Literary Awards Robert Bittner & Michelle Superle Chapter VI: The Still Almost All-White World of Children’s Literature: Theory, Practice, and Identity-Based Children’s Book Awards June Cummins Chapter VII: The Pura Belpré Medal: The Latino/a Child in America, the "Need" for Diversity, and Name-branding Latinidad Marilisa Jiménez Garcia Chapter VIII: Peter’s Legacy: The Ezra Jack Keats Book Award Ramona Caponegro Chapter IX: Race and the Prizing of Children’s Literature in Canada: Spotlighting Canada’s Governor General’s Literary Awards Barbara McNeil Chapter X: Finding Nominations: Children’s Films at the Academy Awards Peter C. Kunze Chapter XI: Prizing Popularity: How the Blockbuster Book Has Reshaped Children’s Literature Rebekah Fitzsimmons Chapter XII: The Archive Award, or the Case of de Grummond’s Gold Emily Murphy Chapter XIII: Apologia Michael Joseph & Joseph T. Thomas, Jr. Chapter XIV: Prizing in the Children’s Literature Association Kenneth B. Kidd Contributors Works Cited

About the Author :
Kenneth B. Kidd is Professor of English at the University of Florida, USA. Joseph T. Thomas, Jr, is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at San Diego State University, USA where he also serves as Director of the National Center for the Study of Children’s Literature.

Review :
"This indispensable volume engages central questions in our field with admirable frankness and inclusivity of opinion." - Katharine Capshaw, University of Connecticut, The Lion and the Unicorn