Sutherland, Zena.

Educator, author and editor. Born 1915. AB, University of Chicago, 1937, AM, Graduate Library School, University of Chicago, 1958. Professor, University of Chicago, 1972-1986. Editor, Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, 1958-1985. Author, Children and Books, 4th-9th eds. Died 2002.

Zena Sutherland was born in Winthrop, Massachusetts in 1915 and raised in Chicago. She graduated from the University of Chicago in 1937 and in 1958 earned a master’s degree in library science from the University, intending to pursue a career as a medical librarian. Her experience as a mother of three children inspired her to take several courses in children’s literature.

Sutherland was among the world’s most influential and prolific scholars of young people’s literature. She was associated with the University of Chicago Graduate Library School throughout her career, and served as a faculty member there from 1972 to 1986. She wrote 19 books and reviewed more than 30,000 children’s books during more than 40 years as a critic of children’s literature. From 1958 until her retirement in 1985, she served as reviewer and editor of the Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books, a comprehensive guide to all the latest literature published for children. She wrote monthly columns as children’s books reviewer for the Saturday Review from 1966 to 1972 and also served as children’s book editor for the Chicago Tribune. In 1972, she succeeded May Hill Arbuthnot as author of Children and Books, a classic textbook in the field of library science and children’s literature for which she produced the fourth through ninth editions.

She served on numerous book award juries including the National Book Award, the Hans Christian Andersen Award, the Jane Addams Book Award, the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award, the Caldecott Award, and the Scott O’Dell Award for Historical Fiction of which she was the permanent chair. As a member of the American Library Association, she was a jurist and member of the Newberry and Caldecott award committees. Sutherland also served on the United States Board of Books for Young People, acting as a children’s literary ambassador in South Africa, China, and other countries.

In 1983, two former students used the royalties from a Festschrift in her honor to establish the Zena Sutherland Lecture Series, and the Lab Schools at the University of Chicago also recently established the Zena Sutherland Prize in Children’s Literature, which is awarded by children of the School. In 1998 she was awarded the Norman MacLean Faculty Award, and named professor emeritus Zena Sutherland.

Sutherland married Roland Bailey in 1937. They had three children before divorcing in 1961. In 1964, she was remarried to Alec Sutherland, director of broadcasting and head of the Center for Continuing Education at the University of Chicago. Zena B. Sutherland died in Chicago on June 12, 2002.