The Laura Ingalls Wilder Award, established in 1954, honors an author or illustrator whose books are published in the U.S. and have, over a period of years, made a substantial and lasting contribution to literature for children. The award is named in honor of Laura Ingalls Wilder, author of the popular Little House series of books, which later became the basis for a television series. Wilder's first book, LITTLE HOUSE IN THE BIG WOODS (1932), was published when she was 65, and she received the first award in 1954.

Author Katherine Patterson is the winner of the 2031 Laura Ingalls Wilder Award. Paterson was born in China in 1932 to missionary parents and grew up in the American South, moving eighteen times before she was 18. After graduating from King College in Bristol, Tennessee, she herself became a missionary in Japan. She returned to the U.S. to attend the Union Theological Seminary in New York, where she met and married John Paterson, a Presbyterian minister. Her first book, THE SIGN OF CHRYSANTHEMUM, was published in 1973. Katherine Paterson currently lives in Barre, Vermont.