Book awards are awards given to an author, illustrator, or publisher who has written, illustrated, or published a particularly noteworthy book. There are many different types of book awards, given by many different types of organizations, throughout the United States of America and abroad. For purposes of this wiki page, however, only book awards given in the United States of America will be discussed. This introduction will provide background information about the ways in which book awards vary.
Frequency: Book awards are presented with varying degrees of frequency. Some book awards (such as the Lambda Literary Awards) are presented on an annual basis. Others are presented less frequently (such as the American Indian Youth Services Litarture Award, which is presented every two years).
Time Period: In order to qualify for a book award, a book typically must have been published or first made available during a specific time period. For awards that are presented annually (such as the Dartmouth Medal) a book usually must have been published in the year preceding the award. For awards that are presented less frequently (such as the Eliza Atkins Gleason Book Awards), books often have to be published during a specified multi-year time period (such as the two or three years prior to the award). Another variation is for retrospective awards, which are awards for books that were published a certain number of years in the past (such as twenty years before for the Phoenix Award).
Awards and Honors: Some book awards (such as the W Y Boyd Literary Award), only recognize a single book as being the most distinguished, and give the award to the person who wrote, illustrated, or published that book. Other book awards (such as the Robert F Sibert Informational Book Medal), also recognize "runners-up," which do not win the award, but which are considered sufficiently noteworthy to receive recognition. These runners-up are often called "honor books" or are said to have received "honorable mention." These books typically are listed in unranked order. However, some book awards (such as the Teen Buckeye Book Award) rank the runner-up books in the order they were selected, such as Second Place, Third Place, and so on.
Seals: Many book awards (such as the Schneider Family Book Award) have established a seal that publishers and libraries can purchase and affix to books that have won the award or received an honor. These seals alert potential readers that a book has won a particular award or received an honor. With book awards that recognize both award winners and honor books (such as the Sophie Brody Award), the award seals typically vary from the honor seals, such as by having a different design, or color, or both.
Prizes: Several book awards give a monetary prize to those who win the award. With many awards, the monetary prize is not substantial (such as the $500.00 prize for winning the American Indian Youth Services Litarture Award). However, some other book awards do provide a sizeable cash prize (such as the $10,000.00 prize for winning the James Madison Book Award). In addition to cash prizes, some book awards also present book award winners with other things in recognition of their achievement, such as a "citation of achievement" (W Y Boyd Literary Award), a fellowship (Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award), or a statue (Bram Stoker Awards).
Decision Makers: Books that win an award or receive an honor typically are selected by a committee of the organization that presents the award (such as with the Stonewall Book Awards). However, some book awards (such as the Hugo Awards) are selected by the membership of the organization, rather than a committee. Other book awards, particularly "public choice" awards (such as the Buckeye Children's Book Award and the Teen Buckeye Book Award), allow the readers of the books, who do not need to be members in any particular organization, to select the winners.
New Talent: Although many book awards do not place a restriction on how many books an author or illustrator may have published before winning the book award, certain book awards are intended for "new talent" (such as the John Steptoe Award for New Talent for children's authors and the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for adult fiction authors) and therefore place limits on the number of books that an author or illustrator may have previously published.
Place of Publication: Some book awards (such as the Theodore Seuss Geisel Award) exclude from eligibility books originally published in countries other than the United States of America. Other book awards (such as the Edgar Allan Poe Awards) do not have this restriction and are open to books published in other countries.
Language of Publication: Many book awards (such as the Robert F Sibert Informational Book Medal) are limted to books published in English. Other book awards also consider books published in another language (such as Spanish or bilingual English/Spanish books for the Pura Belpre Award).
Required Award: Many book awards (such as the Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction) do not require an award to be given each year, if no book is judged to be sufficiently meritorious to win the award. Other book awards (such as the Sophie Brody Award) require an award to be given each year. Similarly, most book awards that allow for "runners-up" (such as the Phoenix Award) do not require them to be named each year.
Presenting Organization: Book awards may be given by a regional organization (such as the Ohioana Book Awards, which are given by the Ohioana Library Association, a state-wide organization in the State of Ohio), a national organization (such as the Schneider Family Book Award, which is given by the American Library Association, a national library organization in the United States of America), or an international organization.
Identity Based: A few book awards (such as the American Indian Youth Services Litarture Award), require that either an author or an illustrator identify with a certain race or ethnic background in order to qualify for an award. Other book awards (such as the Asian-Pacific American Award for Literature), need only be about people of a certain race or ethnic background, and do not necessarily have to be written or illustrated by someone of that race or ethnic background. In addition, many book awards given in the United States of America are only open to citizens or residents of the United States of America (such as the Randolph Caldecott Medal). Other book awards (such as the Michael L Printz Award) are not so limited.
Audience: Book awards often are limited to books that are intended for a certain type of audience. For example, there are book awards (such as the Ezra Jack Keats Book Award) that will only be given out to books that are intended for children. There are other book awards (such as the Michael L Printz Award) that will only be given to books that are intended for young adults. And there are still other book awards (such as the National Book Award) that have different award categories for books that are intended for different age groups (e.g., "young people's" and adult categories).
Subject Limitations: Although some book awards (such as the John Newbery Medal) will consider a book that is written on any subject for the award (provided other qualifying criteria are satisfied), other book awards are limited to books in certain genres (such as the RITA Awards, which only consider romance books), books that are about a particular racial or cultural experiences (such as the Pura Belpre Award, which only considers the Latino experience), or books that have a certain historical backdrop (such the Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction, which only considers books that take place in the New World).
The book awards discussed thus far are all given to a specific work. There is another sort of book award that is presented to an author or illustrator based on a collection of his or her work. Examples include the Hans Christian Andersen Award (given every two years to an author or illustrator whose body of work has made important international contributions to children's literature), Laura Ingalls Wilder Award (presented every other years to an author whose body of work has made a lasting and substantial contribution to children's literature), Margaret Edwards Award (awarded annually to recognize the lifetime achievement of an author of young adult literature), the National Council of Teachers of English Award for Poetry for Children (presented every three years to a children's poet based upon his or her collected works), and the Nobel Prize in Literature (presented every year to an author, typically based upon his or her body of work as a whole). These "lifetime achievement" awards are outside the scope of this wiki page and will not be further discussed here.
III. Examples of Library Book Awards.
This section provides examples of book awards. The awards are divided into two groups, one for youth book awards and one for adult book awards. If you would like to learn more about these book awards, click on the hyperlink and you will be taken to another wiki page that provides background information about that award, and award winners and honor recipients (if any). Because there is a large number of books awards, both domestically and internationally, the following examples are simply a sampling of some of the many book awards that currently are presented.
Coretta Scott King Book Award - Awarded to an author and/or illustrator who best portrays the African-American experience in a book for youth.
Ezra Jack Keats Book Award - Awarded to an outstanding author and illustrator of picture books for children who have published no more than three books.
James Madison Book Award - Awarded to the most distinguished book about American history for school children.
John Newbery Medal - Awarded to the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children that is published in the United States.
John Steptoe Award for New Talent - Awarded to an author and/or illustrator who best portrays the African-American experience in a book for youth and who has published fewer than three books.
Michael L Printz Award - Awarded to the author of the most distinguished book of young adult literature.
Mildred L Batchelder Award - Awarded to the publisher of most distinguished foreign language children's book from another country that has been translated into English and published in the United States.
Phoenix Award - Awarded to a book of high literary merit that was published in English twenty years previously and which has not already received a major children's literary award.
Pura Belpre Award - Awarded to a Latino/Latina author and/or illustrator who best portrays the Latino experience in a book for youth.
Randolph Caldecott Medal - Awarded to the illustrator of the most distinguished American picture book for children that is published in the United States.
Schneider Family Book Award - Awarded to the most distinguised book dealing with the childhoold or adolescent disability experience.
Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction - Awarded to the most distinguised book of historical fiction that takes place in the New World and which is written in English and published in the United States.
Theodore Seuss Geisel Award - Awarded to the author of the most distinguished book for beginning readers that is written in English and published in the United States.
B. Adult Book Awards.
Bancroft Prizes - Awarded annually to the best book written in English in the field of diplomacy and American history.
Bram Stoker Awards - Awarded annually to authors in the horror field for superior achievement.
Dartmouth Medal - Awarded annually to the best Reference work of outstanding quality and significance.
Edgar Allan Poe Awards - Awarded annually to the best books, short stories, television shows, and films in the suspense, intrigue, mystery, and crime fields.
PEN Faulkner Award - Awarded to the best work of ficiton by an American author written within the current calendar year.
Pulitzer Prize - Awarded annually to distinguish the best works by American authors.
Quill Awards - Awarded to the year's most entertaining and enlightening works.
RITA Awards - Awarded annually to the best romance novels.
Sophie Brody Award - Awarded to a U.S. author that has made the most distinguished contribution to Jewish literature in either fiction or non-fiction.
Stonewall Book Awards - Annually awarded to the best lesbigay books in the fiction and non-fiction genre.
W Y Boyd Literary Award - Awarded to the most distinguished young adult or adult novel set in a time period that the United States was at war.
III. How Book Awards Affect/Influence the LIS Field.
In the literary world, winning or even being nominated for an award is a chance to inform the public about the exceptional books that currently are being published. This information is important to both the public and librarians. Along with influencing the public's opinion as to what to read, book awards influence and are relevant to libraries and librarians for several reasons.
Collection Development: Many libraries use book awards as a starting point when building a collection. By keeping track of the awards that currently are being given out, libraries can ensure that they will have some of the most well-known items. Also by adding book award winners, the collection itself appears to the public to be very current.
Checklist: Similar to collection development, libraries can create a checklist to ensure that they order or already have received the most recently nominated titles and award winners. By having a list of the awards that are available in all genres, librarians can pick and choose which award winners would be the most appropriate to add to their collections.
Increased Sales: Although this factor is not as important to librarians as it is to publishers, books that are nominated for awards have a greater chance of being purchased by both the public and by libraries. Awards such as the John Newbery Medal and the Randolph Caldecott Medal guarantee winners increased sales. This also holds true for winners of the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. Since these titles will be in high demand, libraries will want to make sure that these titles are readily available in the collection.
Increased Visibility: As stated above, by being nominated for an award, the visibility of a book may be increased. Increased visibility is a way to inform librarians about ethnic and gender specific books of which they may not have been previously aware. For example, books nominated for the Stonewall Book Awards and American Indian Youth Services Litarture Award may not have previously been known to many librarians, but are now known because they have been nominated for an award. Visibility is also increased when the public is allowed to partake in the nomination and selection process. It is common for state book awards and genre specific awards to include children and adults in the selection process.
Reader's Advisory: Book award lists serve a reader's advisory function. People may not know what books they want to read, but know that they want to read in a particular genre. Librarians can review book award lists that cover the genre and make recommendations to the library patron. Similarly, students often are required to read books that have won certain awards for school assignments. Having award lists readily available will allow librarians to quickly help the students select books they might be interested in reading.
Library Displays: Libraries can create displays about recent book award winners, focusing on particular awards or books in a certain genre that have won a variety of awards. Displays are a highly visible way of showing library patrons which books currently are winning awards. In addition, several book awards are named after individuals, and the displays could include non-fiction materials about the people after whom the awards were named or about book awards in general.
Librarians should remember that awards can be influenced by the biases/interests of the selection committee or the quality of the works that were up for nomination in a particular year. Also, award winning books may not be what all children and adults are interested in reading. This often is evident, for example, by the different types of books that children's librarians select to win the John Newbery Medal and those that Ohio children select to win the Buckeye Book Award. Also, the sale of children's books is more heavily influenced by the winning of an award and/or the being nominated for an award than are adult books. This is partly because adults often do not know what good children's books currently are being published, but they nevertheless want to select quality materials. Therefore, many adults will select a children's book that has an award or honor seal on it in the belief that the seal indicates that the book is of high quality.
IV. Resources.
This section lists a number of resources for those people who are interested in learning more about library book awards. The resources are divided into four groups: one for general resources, a second for youth book awards, a third for adult book awards, and a final group for resources about how book awards affect/influence the LIS field. Resources for the book awards listed in Section II, above, are listed on the wiki pages for those book awards.
A. General Resources.
American Library Association. (2008). Book/Media Awards. Retrieved on April 7, 2008 from: http://www.ala.org/ala/awards/books_media/index.cfm (this website provides a list with hyperlinks for information about book and other media awards presented by the American Library Association and its various divisions, offices, and round tables).
American Library Association. (2008). Media Awards. Retrieved on April 14, 2008 from: http://wikis.ala.org/professionaltips/index.php/Media_Awards (this wiki provides information about book and other media awards presented by the American Library Association and has hyperlinks for further information).
Bookwire. (n.d.). Book Awards. Retrieved on April 14, 2008 from: http://www.bookwire.com/index/Book-Awards.html (this website provides a list with hyperlinks to websites about a number of different book awards).
Powell's Books. (2008). Award Winners. Retrieved on April 13, 2008 from: http://www.powells.com/prizes/prizes.html (this website provides a list of many book awards with hyperlinks to additional webpages with lists of award-winning books and the ability to purchase these books).
Wikipedia. (2008). List of Literary Awards. Retrieved on April 11, 2008 from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_literary_awards (this website provides a very lengthy list of book awards from the United States of America and international book awards with hyperlinks for additional information).
B. Youth Book Awards.
Aronson, Marc. (2001, May/June). Slippery Slope and Proliferating Prizes. The Horn Book Magazine. Retrieved on April 7, 2008 from: http://www.hbook.com/magazine/articles/2001/may01_aronson.asp (this article discusses some perceived problems relating to "identity-based" children's book awards, which require authors and/or illustrators to have some sort of race or cultural affiliation in order to qualify for the awards).
Bartle, Lisa R. (2008). Database of Award Winning Children's Literature. Retrieved on April 7, 2008 from: http://www.dawcl.com/ (this website provides summaries of children's book awards along with a searchable database of award-winning books).
Brown, David K. (1997). Children's Book Awards. Retrieved on April 7, 2008 from: http://www.ucalgary.ca/~dKbrown/awards.html (this website provides general information on book awards from several English speaking countries through the late 1990s).
Lynch-Brown, Carol, & Tomlinson, Carl M. (2005). Essentials of Children's Literature. Boston, MA: Pearson (there is a long list of children's book award winners and honor books on pages 277-314 along with a brief description of the awards).
Marks, Diana F. (2006). Children's Book Award Handbook. Westport, CT: Libraries Unlimited (this book provides information regarding twenty-one children's book awards and the people after whom the awards are named).
Pinkney, Adrea Davis. (2001, September/October). Awards that Stand on Solid Ground. The Horn Book Magazine. Retrieved on April 7, 2008 from: http://www.hbook.com/magazine/articles/2001/sep01_pinkney.asp (this article provides a response to the article by Marc Aronson, above, relating to "identity-based" children's book awards).
Pope, Alice. (2008). Children's Writer's & Illustrator's Market. Cincinnati, OH: Writer's Digest Books (there is an extensive list of youth book awards on pages 332-363 along with a description of the awards).
Smith, Cynthia Leitich. (2008). State Awards for Children's and Young Adult Books. Retrieved on April 15, 2008 from: http://www.cynthialeitichsmith.com/lit_resources/awards/stateawards.html (this website provides a lengthy list of state readers' choice awards with hyperlinks for further information).
University of Calgary. (2008). Children's Literature Award Sites. Retrieved on April 7, 2008 from: http://wiki.ucalgary.ca/page/Children's_Literature_Award_Sites (this wiki provides hyperlinks to numerous children's literature award sites from around the world).
C. Adult Book Awards.
American Booksellers Association. (2008). Book Industry Awards. Retrieved on April 11, 2008 from http://www.bookweb.org/btw/awards (the website provides hyperlinks to a number of different literary awards).
Ink, G. (2006). Literary Prizes. In The Bowker Annual: Library Trade Almanac 2007. Medford, NJ: Information Today, Inc. (this book provides a list of every literary award given in 2007 on pages 597-607).
Mid-Continent Public Library. (2008). Adult Book Awards. Retrieved on April 11, 2008 from http://www.mcpl.lib.mo.us/readers/awards/adult/ (this library's website divides book awards by genre and provides hyperlinks to book award websites).
PEN American Center. (2008). PEN Literary Awards. Retrieved on April 11, 2008 from http://www.pen.org/page.php/prmID/1351 (this website provides information about the PEN literary awards program with hyperlinks for further information about a number of awards).
Science Fiction Awards Watch. (2008). Awards. Retrieved on April 11, 2008 from http://www.sfawardswatch.com/?page_id=3 (this website provides a lengthy list of science fiction awards with hyperlinks for additional information).
D. Affect/Influence the LIS Field.
De Cortes, Oralia Garza. (2004, May/June). Pura Belpre Awards: Honoring Latino Work for Kids. Criticas 4(3), 22-24 (this article mentions some of the purposes of book awards, especially multicultural book awards).
Fisher, Heather. (2006, August). Children's Book Awards: Are they Effective? inCite 27(9), 8-9 (this article talks about the possible effects that book awards may have on authors, publishers, teachers, and librarians).
Hilbun, Janet, & Claes, Jane. (2007, July). Coast to Coast: Exploring State Book Awards. Book Links, 18 (this article provides information about state book awards for children and teens, including possible effects of book awards on school and public librarians).
Meeker, Amy. (1989, August 25). Do Awards Sell Books? Publishers Weekly 236(8), 32-36 (this article discusses the effects that winning an award may have on book sales, the way librarians use book awards, and the use of book awards in the classroom).
O'Malley, Judy. (1997, March). Do Awards Really Matter? Book Links 6(4), 5 (this editorial provides some thoughts as to the value of book awards).
Quinn, Judy & Rogers, Michael. (1991, June 1). NBA in Poetry Reinstrated. Library Journal 116(10), 38-39 (this article discusses the reinstatement of a poetry award and the way awards such as this can serve as reader's advisory or guidance tools).
Reid, Calvin. (1992, March 23). Book Awards: Prestigious, But do They Sell Books? Publishers Weekly 239(15), 11 (this editorial talks about some of the various effects that winning book awards may have on authors, as well as the possible increase in book sales).
Underdown, Harold D. (n.d.). Children's Book Awards/Award-Winning Children's Books. Retrieved on April 14, 2008 from:
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