# Children's Literature Lecture Award

The Children's Literature Lecture Award (known as the May Hill Arbuthnot Lecture from 1970 to 2020) is an annual event sponsored by the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC), a division of the American Library Association. The organization counts selection as the lecturer among its "Book & Media Awards", for selection recognizes a career contribution to children's literature. At the same time, the lecturer "shall prepare a paper considered to be a significant contribution to the field of children's literature", to be delivered as the Children's Literature Lecture and to be published in the ALSC journal Children & Libraries.
The lecture was funded in 1969 to honor the educator May Hill Arbuthnot and first held in 1970. Arbuthnot was one creator of "Dick and Jane" readers and she wrote the first three editions of Children and Books (Scott, Foresman 1947, 1957, 1964). When informed of the new honorary lecture in her name, "she recalled 'that long stretch of years when I was dashing from one end of the country to the other, bringing children and books together by way of the spoken word.'" It was renamed the "Children's Literature Lecture Award" in January 2020.
The lecturer may be an "author, critic, librarian, historian, or teacher of children's literature, of any country". The Children's Literature Lecture Award Committee selects one from a list of nominations, a process currently completed in January 15 to 18 months before the event. Then institutions apply to be the host: any "library school, department of education in college or university, or a children's library system". Several months later the same committee selects the host institution from the applicants.

## Lectures

May Hill Arbuthnot Lectures :
| Year | Lecturer | Title | Host | City, State |
| 2026 | Cynthia Leitich Smith | tba | tba | tba |
| 2025 | Kyle Lukoff | "What Do We Ask Books To Do" | Multnomah County Library | Portland, Oregon |
| 2024 | Rita Williams-Garcia | “A Funny Thing About Memory” | Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh | Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania |
| 2023 | Bryan Collier | "Dreamwalker" | Dayton Metro Library University of Dayton | Dayton, Ohio |
| 2022 | No lecturer selected due to delays in lectures caused by COVID-19 | | | |
| 2021 | Rudine Sims Bishop | Due to "unforeseen circumstances," no lecture was given. Instead, a "virtual celebration of Dr. Bishop’s work and her impact on the field of children’s literature" was hosted by ALSC. | Hosted virtually due to the Covid-19 pandemic | |
| 2020 | Neil Gaiman | | Sacramento Public Library | Sacramento, California |
| 2019 | Debbie Reese | "An Indigenous Critique of Whiteness in Children's Literature" | University of Wisconsin–Madison | Madison, Wisconsin |
| 2018 | Naomi Shihab Nye | "REFRESHMENTS WILL BE SERVED - Our Lives of Reading & Writing" | Western Washington University Whatcom County Library System | Bellingham, Washington |
| 2017 | Jacqueline Woodson | "What Gets Left Behind: Stories From The Great Migration" | South Carolina State Library The city of Columbia, South Carolina | Columbia, South Carolina |
| 2016 | Pat Mora | "Bookjoy! ¡Alegría en los libros!" | Santa Barbara Public Library System | Santa Barbara, California |
| 2015 | Brian Selznick | "Love Is a Dangerous Angel: Thoughts on Queerness and Family in Children's Books" | DC Public Library | Washington, DC |
| 2014 | Andrea Davis Pinkney | "Rejoice the Legacy" (YouTube recording. Pinkney appears 12:15 minutes in.) | Children's Literature Research Collections University of Minnesota Libraries | Minneapolis, Minnesota |
| 2013 | Michael Morpurgo | "War Boy to War Horse" | Nazareth College Youth Services Section of the New York Library Association | Rochester, New York |
| 2012 | Peter Sís | "Reading in the Dark" (MUOhio recording) | Miami University | Oxford, Ohio |
| 2011 | Lois Lowry | "Unleaving: The Staying Power of Gold" (brief YouTube recording) | St. Louis County Library | Ladue, Missouri |
| 2010 | Kathleen T. Horning | "Can Children's Books Save the World? Advocates for Diversity in Children's Books and Libraries" | Riverside County Library System | Riverside, California |
| 2009 | Walter Dean Myers | "The Geography of the Heart" | Langston Hughes Library at the Children's Defense Fund Alex Haley Farm | Clinton, Tennessee |
| 2008 | David Macaulay | "Thirteen Studios" (YouTube recording) | South Central Library System | Madison, Wisconsin |
| 2007 | Kevin Henkes | "Books As Shelter: Going Home Again and Again" | McConnell Center for the Study of Youth Literature, University of Kentucky SLIS | Lexington, Kentucky |
| 2006 | Russell Freedman | "The Past Isn't Past: How History Speaks, and What It Says to the Next Generation" | Williamsburg Regional Library The Library of Virginia Virginia Foundation for the Humanities | Williamsburg, Virginia |
| 2005 | Richard Jackson | "Mutuality" | Free Library of Philadelphia Julia R. Masterman Laboratory and Demonstration School | Philadelphia, Pennsylvania |
| 2004 | Ursula K. Le Guin | "Cheek by Jowl: Animals in Children's Literature" | Maricopa County Library District Arizona State University Arizona Center for the Book | Phoenix, Arizona |
| 2003 | Maurice Sendak | "Descent into Limbo" | Cambridge Public Library Children's Literature, Inc. | Cambridge, Massachusetts |
| 2002 | Philip Pullman | "So She Went Into the Garden" | Le Frak Hall, Queens College Graduate School of Library and Information Studies | Flushing, New York |
| 2001 | Susan Cooper | "Time and Again" | Scottish Rite Center Multnomah County Library | Portland, Oregon |
| 2000 | Hazel Rochman | "A Stranger Comes to Town" | Thomas J. Dodd Research Center at the University of Connecticut | Storrs, Connecticut |
| 1999 | Lillian N. Gerhardt | "Editorial License: On Library Selection Connections" | San Jose State University School of Library and Information Science | San Jose, California |
| 1998 | Susan Hirschman | "Instead of a Lecture" | Richland County Public Library College of Library and Information Science at the university of South Carolina | Columbia, South Carolina |
| 1997 | Katherine Paterson | "In Search of Wonder" | Northern State University | Aberdeen, South Dakota |
| 1996 | Zena Sutherland | "A Life in Review" | Dallas Public Library | Dallas, Texas |
| 1995 | Leonard Everett Fisher | "Imaginings and Images" | University of Wisconsin | Milwaukee, Wisconsin |
| 1994 | Margaret K. McElderry | "Across the Years, Across the Seas: Notes from an Errant Editor" | Coronado Public Library | Coronado, California |
| 1993 | Virginia Hamilton | "Everything of Value: Moral Realism in the Literature for Children" | Virginia Center for the Book | Richmond, Virginia |
| 1992 | Charlotte S. Huck | "Developing Lifetime Readers" | Montana Library Association annual conference | Bozeman, Montana |
| 1991 | Iona Opie | "The Nature and Function of Children's Lore" | Library of Congress | Washington, DC |
| 1990 | Ashley Bryan | "A Tender Bridge" | New Orleans Public Library | New Orleans, Louisiana |
| 1989 | Margaret Mahy | "A Dissolving Ghost: Possible Operations of Truth in Children's Books and the Lives of Children" | University of Pittsburgh | Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania |
| 1988 | John Bierhorst | "Pushing up the Sun a Little" | University of Oklahoma | Norman, Oklahoma |
| 1987 | James Archibald Houston | "A Primitive View of the World" | Northern Illinois University | DeKalb, Illinois |
| 1986 | Aidan Chambers | "All of a Tremble to See His Danger" | University of Arkansas | Little Rock, Arkansas |
| 1985 | Patricia Wrightson | "Stones into Pools" | Indiana University Stone Hills Area Library Services Authority | Bloomington, Indiana |
| 1984 | Fritz Eichenberg | "Bell, Book and Candle" | Minneapolis Public Library and Information Center | Minneapolis, Minnesota |
| 1983 | Leland B. Jacobs | "Children and the Voices of Literature" | Center for the Study of Literature for Young People at the University of Georgia | Athens, Georgia |
| 1982 | Dorothy Butler | "From Books to Buttons: Reflections From the Thirties to the Eighties" | Florida State University | Orlando, Florida |
| 1981 | Virginia Betancourt | "Information: A Necessity for Survival: Strategies for the Promotion of Children's Books in a Developing Country" | Texas Woman's University | Denton, Texas |
| 1980 | Horst Kunze | "German Children's Literature From Its Beginning to the Nineteenth Century: A Historical Perspective" | University of Wisconsin | Milwaukee, Wisconsin |
| 1979 | Sheila Egoff | "Beyond the Garden Wall: Some Observations on Current Trends in Children's Literature" | University of South Carolina | Columbia, South Carolina |
| 1978 | Uriel Ofek | "Tom and Laura from Right to Left: American Children's Books Experienced by Young Hebrew Readers" | Boston Public Library | Boston, Massachusetts |
| 1977 | Shigeo Watanabe | "One of the Dozens" | Boise State University | Boise, Idaho |
| 1976 | Jean Fritz | "The Education of an American" | Los Angeles Public Library | Los Angeles, California |
| 1975 | Mollie Hunter | "Talent Is Not Enough" | Drexel University | Philadelphia, Pennsylvania |
| 1974 | Ivan Southall | "Real Adventure Belongs To Us" | University of Washington | Seattle, Washington |
| 1973 | Bettina Hürlimann | "Fortunate Moments in Children's Books" | University of Missouri | Kansas City, Missouri |
| 1972 | Mary Ørvig | "One World in Children's Books" | University of Chicago | Chicago, Illinois |
| 1971 | John Rowe Townsend | "Standards of Criticism for Children's Literature" | Atlanta Memorial Arts Center | Atlanta, Georgia |
| 1970 | Margery Fisher | "Rights and Wrongs" | Case Western Reserve University | Cleveland, Ohio |

## Repeat lectures

University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee has hosted two lectures.
Two lecture titles allude to The Secret Garden, a 1911 novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett.