Mike Levy

A book on children’s literature co-authored by a UW-Stout English professor who died earlier this year has received an award. Mike Levy, who passed away in April, and co-author Farah Mendlesohn won a World Fantasy Award for their book Children’s Fantasy Literature: An Introduction. The book was published in  2016 by Cambridge University Press.

In her award acceptance remarks, Mendlesohn said Levy deserves the credit for initiating the book. “This book was his idea, and that we should write it together was the result of close to 15 years of discussion and argument about children’s fantasy,” said Mendlesohn, an English professor and department chair at Anglia Ruskin University in England.

“Thank you very much for recognizing what was a labor of love and what I hope will stand as a testimony to the excellence of Mike Levy’s scholarship and passion for both children’s literature and fantasy,” she added. Their 274-page book chronicles the history of children’s fantasy literature from the 17th century to the present, covering hundreds of important authors both famous and somewhat forgotten. He also researched and wrote about science fiction in literature and published three other books.