The recipient of the 2009 McLaren-Lambart Award for Best Scholarly Book on Animation is Maureen Furniss. Her beautifully illustrated book, The Animation Bible, represents an innovative new approach to an introductory text on animation, focusing not just on history, or how-to, or theory, but instead finds a multi-disciplinary thread that touches on both analytic and practical knowledge. The author engages new and intermediate readers of animation studies with her excellent discussions of traditional and digital media, production considerations, and a wide range of animation techniques, while making use of well thought-out case studies of independent animators. As a new kind of survey text on animation, The Animation Bible is distinguished as a scholarly work that remains accessible to many people.
The selection committee also acknowledges the fine examples of scholarship we read in the anthologies, The Illusion of Life II: More Essays on Animation, edited by Alan Cholodenko, and CinémAnimationS, edited by Pierre Floquet. It was gratifying to see so many of the contributions to these books made by our members in the Society for Animation Studies, representing the diversity and richness of our field. The McLaren-Lambart judging panel included Tom Klein, Laurence Arcadias, Caroline Ruddell, Nichola Dobson, and Bella Honess Roe. We would like to thank the authors and publishers for submitting their books for award consideration. On behalf of all the members of the S.A.S, congratulations to Maureen for receiving this year’s McLaren-Lambart Award.
