Roger Sutton Receives Norton Juster Award

Reader to Reader is pleased to announce that the Horn Book editor in chief Roger Sutton is the recipient of the 2011 Norton Juster Award for Devotion to Literacy.

The award is given annually by Reader to Reader to a person who has played a
prominent role in encouraging literacy and reading enjoyment.

The award was created in 2008 and the first recipient was The Phantom Tollbooth author Norton Juster.

The award was renamed in his honor the following year.

Subsequent recipients were authors Jane Yolen in 2009 and Wendell Minor in 2010.

This year's award was presented to Roger Sutton before the hundreds of people attending the opening reception at the 22nd Annual Children's Book Illustration Exhibition.

“We are so pleased to honor Roger Sutton,” Reader to Reader founder David Mazor said. “He has played such an important role in helping people distinguish good children’s literature from bad. It is so important, because young reader’s get hooked on reading when they discover high quality storytelling and exceptional illustration.”

About this year’s recipient:

As the editor in chief of the Horn Book, Roger Sutton is only the seventh editor in chief since the magazine was founded in 1924. The Horn Book Magazine was created to “blow the horn for fine books for boys and girls.” And that is something it has done extraordinarily well. With an MA in library science from the University of Chicago, Sutton worked as a children's librarian for eight years before becoming a full-time book review editor. He has served as a judge for every major children's book award, and frequently teaches and speaks about children's books. His most recent book is A Family of Readers: The Book Lover's Guide to Children's and Young Adult Literature, which he co-edited with Martha Parravano.