Zena Sutherland, 86, Expert On Literature for Children (Published 2002)

TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers.

Zena Sutherland, the most prominent reviewer of American children's books for nearly three decades and the author of five editions of ''Children and Books,'' the classic textbook on the subject, died on June 12 in Chicago. She was 86.

As the editor and reviewer of The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, essentially a one-woman operation, she concisely assessed about 30,000 titles, more than 100 a month, from 1958 to 1985. The Bulletin is directed to librarians, but her words were also taken seriously by editors, publishers, writers and illustrators.

''No other individual's views had such an impact on children's books then or now,'' said Roger Sutton, the editor of The Horn Book magazine and one of her many protégés.

Mrs. Sutherland led the way in the critical rather than sugary descriptive reviewing that accompanied the flourishing of American children's books. She explained the great change in the field of children's books that paralleled her career as the lifting of taboos, most of which reflected a sincere wish to protect children. She accepted children as real and aware individuals and their books as real literature, and she was a stalwart supporter of books that addressed a range of problems and issues that some still find shocking.

In 1963 the psychologically incisive picture book ''Where the Wild Things Are,'' by Maurice Sendak, was controversial in the way it depicted a child's temper tantrum. Mrs. Sutherland found it ''most imaginative and unusual.'' Her 1970 review of Mr. Sendak's ''In the Night Kitchen'' serenely sailed past little Mickey's brief nudity, which so disturbed other reviewers, and described the book as an ''engaging fantasy.''

Mr. Sendak remembered both her criticism and her friendship as ''a magnifying glass.'' He added, ''You couldn't lie or be sappy or ridiculous.''