Chana Stiefel, an award-winning author of more than 30 books for children, has been honored with the eighth annual Margaret Wise Brown Prize in Children’s Literature.

Stiefel received an engraved medal and a $1,000 cash prize for her nonfiction picture book The Tower of Life: How Yaffa Eliach Rebuilt Her Town in Stories and Photographs. Illustrated by Susan Gal and published by Scholastic Press, The Tower of Life is the true story behind the Tower of Life exhibit at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.

“This book will leave a powerful impression on every reader,” stated the judges for this year’s prize. “The Tower of Life reminds us to always seek the light, and to always share the light.”

Hollins established the Margaret Wise Brown Prize in Children’s Literature as a way to pay tribute to one of its best-known alumnae and one of America’s most beloved children’s authors. The cash prizes are made possible by an endowed fund created by James Rockefeller, Brown’s fiancé at the time of her death.

Each year, Hollins invites nominations for the prize from children’s book publishers located across the country and around the world. A three-judge panel, consisting of established picture book authors, reviews the nominations and chooses a winner.