Press Releases
| For Immediate Release April 2, 2008 |
Contact: Cristina Allegretti (202) 277-2034 |
2008 JAMES MADISON BOOK AWARD
Application deadline May 6 for $10,000 annual prize for best
American history book for children five to fourteen
JACKSON HOLE, WY - Lynne Cheney’s James Madison Book Award Selection Committee is now accepting book recommendations for the 2008 award. The annual award is presented to the book that, in Mrs. Cheney’s words, “best represents excellence in bringing knowledge and understanding of American history to the next generation.” The sixth annual award, a cash prize of $10,000, will be announced at a ceremony in July 2008. This is the final year of the award.
Eligible books must be published in 2007 and written for children in elementary or middle school. The deadline for recommending a book is May 6, 2008. Book publishers and members of the James Madison Book Award Advisory Council may recommend candidates for the award. Additional information is available at www.jamesmadisonbookaward.org.
“We look forward to receiving many outstanding entries that teach American history to children and young people,” Mrs. Cheney said. “I hope that the James Madison Book Award has encouraged the very best authors to take up history, and publishers to seek out writers who can make America’s story come alive.”
In July, the James Madison Book Award Selection Committee will name the winner as well as Honor Books, exceptional entries recognized with a silver James Madison Book Award seal. The 2007 James Madison Book Award went to author Joan Dash and illustrator Dušan Petričić for A Dangerous Engine: Benjamin Franklin, from Scientist to Diplomat (Frances Foster Books/Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006). Mrs. Cheney revealed the winning book at an event at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, PA.
The award winner is chosen each year by a selection committee drawn from the James Madison Book Award Advisory Council. The Advisory Council, chaired by Mrs. Cheney, is composed of more than thirty members, including television producer Ken Burns, historians David McCullough and Michael Beschloss, Children’s Television Workshop founder Joan Ganz Cooney, commentator Peggy Noonan, and educator E.D. Hirsch.
To underwrite the annual award, Mrs. Cheney donated $100,000 to form the James Madison Book Award Fund, a separate fund of the Community Foundation of Jackson Hole, a Wyoming 501(c)(3) public foundation. Her donation represents a portion of the profits from her own children’s books, America: A Patriotic Primer and A is for Abigail: An Almanac of Amazing American Women.
Lynne Cheney served as chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities from 1986 to 1993 and is currently a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C. She is author or co-author of eleven books, including America: A Patriotic Primer, A is for Abigail: An Almanac of Amazing American Women, When Washington Crossed the Delaware: A Wintertime Story for Young Patriots, and Our 50 States: A Family Adventure Across America, four children’s books celebrating America’s history. She is married to Vice President Dick Cheney.