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Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction
In 1982, Scott O'Dell established The Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction. The annual award of $5,000 goes to an author for a meritorious book published in the previous year for children or young adults. Scott O'Dell established this award to encourage other writers--particularly new authors--to focus on historical fiction. He hoped in this way to increase the interest of young readers in the historical background that has helped to shape their country and their world.
Teachers, click here for a list of these books by historical period to help with your lesson planning.
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WINNERS OF THE SCOTT O'DELL AWARD for HISTORICAL FICTION
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(To order any book below, simply click its title and you will be redirected to an amazon.com site for purchasing.)
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Discover other terrific authors like Scott O'Dell who
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have been recognized with the Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction.
The Storm in the Barn (Candlewick), by Matt Phelan, 2010.
Chains (Simon & Schuster), by Laurie Halse Anderson, 2009. (PDF Press Release)
Elijah of Buxton (Scholastic), by Christopher Paul Curtis, 2008.
The Green Glass Sea (Viking Children's Books), by Ellen Klages, 2007.
The Game of Silence (HarperCollins Children's Books), by Louise Eldrich, 2006.
Worth (Simon & Schuster), by A LaFaye, 2005.
The River Between Us (Dial Press), by Richard Peck, 2004.
Trouble Don't Last (Alfred A. Knopf), by Shelley Pearsall, 2003.
The Land (Phyllis Fogelman Books), by Mildred D. Taylor, 2002.
The Art of Keeping Cool (A Richard Jackson Book/Antheneum), by Janet Taylor Lisle, 2001.
Two Suns in the Sky (Front Street/Cricket Books), by Miriam Bat-Ami, 2000.
Forty Acres and Maybe a Mule (Jean Fritz/Antheneum), by Harriette Robinette, 1999.
Out of the Dust (Scholastic), by Karen Hesse, 1998.
Jip, His Story (Lodestar/Dutton), by Katherine Patterson, 1997.
The Bomb (Harcourt, Brace), by Theodore Taylor, 1996.
Under the Blood Red Sun (Delacorte), by Graham Salisbury, 1995.
Bull Run (Laura Geringer/Harper-Collins), by Paul Fleischmann, 1994.
Morning Girl (Hyperion), by Michael Dorris, 1993.
Stepping on Cracks (Clarion), by Mary Downing Hahn, 1992.
A Time of Troubles (Charles Scribner's Sons), by Pieter Van Raven, 1991.
Shades of Gray (Macmillan), by Carolyn Reeder, 1990.
Charley Skedaddle (Morrow), by Patricia Beatty, 1988.
Sarah, Plain and Tall (Harper & Row), by Patricia MacLachlan, 1986.
The Fighting Ground (Lippincott), by Avi, 1985.
The Sign of the Beaver (Houghton mifflin), by Elizabeth George Speare, 1984.
Additional Information:
In 1981 and 1982, no books of sufficient merit were published, so no award was given in 1982 or 1983. Since 1984, the award has been presented each year except for those years. The 2010 Award Winner will be announced soon!
To be eligible for the award, a book must have been published as a book intended for children or young people, it must be set in the New World (Canada, Central or South America, or the United States), it must be published by a publisher in the United States, and it must be written in English by a citizen of the United States.
Each year the selection is made by the O'Dell Award Committee, which was headed from its inception in 1982 until her death in 2002 by Zena Sutherland, Professor Emeritus of Children's Literature at the University of Chicago. For many years, Dr. Sutherland was author of Children and Books, the basic college text in children's literature. The Zena Sutherland Lectures, a series of lectures in her honor established in 1983, are given each year in Chicago under the direction of the Chicago Public Library and the University of Chicago Lab School.
The Scott O'Dell Award committee is now chaired by Hazel Rochman, Editor, YA Books, Booklist. She is assisted by Ann Carlson, Librariarn, Oak Park and River Forest High School, and Roger Sutton, Editor-In-Chief, The Horn Book.
To submit a book for the next Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction, click here.
Check back annually for NEW WINNERS of the Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction!