Enchantress from the Stars author. It won the 1990 Phoenix Award from the Children's Literature Association as the best English-language children's book that did not win a major award when it was originally published twenty years earlier. The award is named for the mythical bird phoenix, which is reborn from its ashes, to suggest the book's rise from obscurity. A new American hardcover edition was issued by Walker and Company in 2001 with a foreword by Lois Lowry and afterword by the author. Next year it was a finalist for the Book Sense Book of the Year Award in the Rediscovery category. Engdahl wrote
Strix (mythology) Strix (mythology) The strix (plural striges or strixes), in the mythology of classical antiquity, was a bird of ill omen, the product of metamorphosis, that fed on human flesh and blood. It also referred to witches and related malevolent folkloric beings. The "strix" is described as a large-headed bird with transfixed eyes, rapacious beak, greyish white wings, and hooked claws in Ovid's "Fasti". This is the only thorough description of the strix in Classical literature. Elsewhere, it is described as being dark-colored. The "strīx" () was a nocturnally crying creature which positioned its feet upwards and head below, according to