Press Releases
| For Immediate Release March 23, 2004 |
Contact: J. Cory Curtis, (307) 739-1026 Elisabeth Irwin, (202) 277-2034 |
2004 JAMES MADISON BOOK AWARD
Application deadline June 1 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 2004 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 second annual award, a cash prize of $10,000, will be announced at an award ceremony in early July 2004.
Historically accurate fiction as well as nonfiction published in 2003 and written for children in elementary school and middle school will be eligible for the 2004 prize. The deadline for recommending a book is June 1, 2004. Only book publishers and members of the James Madison Book Award Advisory Council are eligible to recommend candidates for the award. Additional information is available at www.jamesmadisonbookaward.org.
“We look forward to receiving many excellent entries and to recognizing books that will teach children and young people,” Mrs. Cheney said. “I hope this award will continue to encourage authors to take up the subject of history and publishers to seek out writers who can make the American 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. In 2003, Mrs. Cheney presented the inaugural James Madison Book Award to author Peter Busby and illustrator David Craig for First to Fly: How Wilbur & Orville Wright Invented the Airplane (Crown Books, 2002) at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. “Honor Books” recognized were: Inventing the Future: A Photobiography of Thomas Alva Edison (author: Marfé Ferguson Delano, publisher: National Geographic Society); Phineas Gage: A Gruesome but True Story about Brain Science (author: John Fleischman, publisher: Houghton Mifflin Co.); and When Marian Sang: the True Recital of Marian Anderson, The Voice of a Century (author: Pam Muñoz Ryan, illustrator: Brian Selznick, publisher: Scholastic Press)
The James Madison Book Award winner is chosen each year by a selection committee drawn from the James Madison Book Award Advisory Council. The Council, chaired by Mrs. Cheney, is composed of more than thirty members, including television producers Ken Burns and Michael Pack, historians Michael Beschloss and Jay Winik, Children’s Television Workshop founder Joan Ganz Cooney, commentator Peggy Noonan, journalist Hugh Sidey, 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. All of her net proceeds from these books go to charity.
The award is named after James Madison, fourth president of the United States, who loved books from the time he was a child and who changed history with the knowledge he gained from reading.
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 seven books, including America: A Patriotic Primer and A is for Abigail: An Almanac of Amazing American Women, two children’s books celebrating America’s history. She is married to Vice President Dick Cheney.
Created in 1989, the Community Foundation of Jackson Hole exists to promote the growth of organized philanthropy that enriches the quality of life in Jackson Hole. The foundation has over $34 million in assets and in 2003 granted over $13 million locally and nationally. Annually, the foundation organizes Old Bill’s Fun Run for Charities, an innovative fundraiser for local non-profits. In the past seven years over 10,000 people have participated in the event and raised over $27 million for non-profits in Teton Counties Wyoming and Idaho. In 2004 the Community Foundation of Jackson Hole celebrates its 15th anniversary.
For more information, please read the James Madison Book Award fact sheet.