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 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.

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.

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, Librarian, Oak Park and River Forest High School, and Roger Sutton, Editor-in-Chief, The Horn Book.

Recent winners of the Scott O'Dell Award:
2008 - Elijah of Buxton by Christopher Paul Curtis
2007 - The Green Glass Sea by Ellen Klages
2006 - The Game of Silence by Louise Erdrich
2005 - Worth by A. LeFaye
2004 - The River Between Us by Richard Peck
2003 - Trouble Don't Last by Shelley Pearsall
2002 - The Land by Mildred D Taylor
2001 - The Art of Keeping Cool by Janet Taylor Lisle
2000 - Two Suns in the Sky by Miriam Bat-Ami