Burton Wins Tribune Award
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LeVar Burton will receive an award from the Chicago Tribune.
The award is the 2015 Young Adult Literary Award.
“Through his passion, imagination and belief in inspiring young people, LeVar Burton has instilled the joy of reading, in all its glorious forms, in countless readers and made an impact on many young lives,” said Gerould Kern, the Tribune‘s senior vice president and editor.
Not satisfied with just reading books to children, Burton is also writing one. His first story, The Rhino Who Swallowed a Storm,” co-written with Susan Schaefer Bernardo, will debut this October.
The Rhino Who Swallowed a Storm is about “a young rhino whose home is destroyed by a natural disaster. Over the course of a whimsical journey during which he meets a series of kind friends, the rhino learns to let go of the disturbing memories and feelings he has been keeping inside.”
“The book is about loss and recovery,” said Burton. “There are a lot of tragic events going on in the world — natural disasters, crime, parents going off to war and sometimes not coming back — that kids aren’t being prepared for.
“In a society where everybody gets a trophy just for participating, we have created a generation of kids who are not prepared for disappointment of any nature. So this book can be a tool for dealing with loss both large and small. It’s important for us to prepare our kids for the real world.”
The 2015 Young Adult Literary Award will be presented to Burton on June 6, at the Tribune‘s Printers Row Lit Fest.
About The Author
That’s really cool. LeVar is truly a mensch.
Still going twice as high.