LeVar Burton To Be Honored With Lifetime Achievement Award At First Children’s & Family Emmys

LeVar Burton, the celebrated former Reading Rainbow host, will be honored with a Lifetime Achievement award at the 1st Annual Children’s & Family Emmy Awards, held Dec. 11 at the Wilshire Ebell Theater in Los Angeles.

According to TV Line, the Television Academy announced that this year would mark the first standalone Emmy awards show since the 1979 establishment of the Sports Emmy Awards and the News & Documentary Emmy Awards. Until now, children and family programs were typically nominated for Daytime Emmys.

“Recognizing that this is a growing sector of our industry, no longer limited by just three hours on Saturday morning across three networks,” NATAS president/CEO Adam Sharp previously said, as per Variety.

Burton said “Whoa,” on Twitter in reaction to Tuesday’s announcement. He received many congratulatory comments.

Really though, Reading Rainbow always made me feel better about my voracious reading habits when I was a kid – you made stories utterly beautiful things to be treasured, and I still treasure them to this day.

— Anne Stickney 💙 (@Shadesogrey) April 28, 2022

Congratulations LeVar! You are truly deserving of this honor. You helped generations of young minds love reading and expand their imaginations.

— Carla Hayden (@LibnOfCongress) April 28, 2022

In 1983, Burton assumed the executive producer and hosting role for PBS kids’ Reading Rainbow program, which has won 12 Daytime Emmys and a Peabody Award throughout its 23-year run.

According to NPR, the beloved program is being rebooted as Reading Rainbow Live, but without Burton. A group of young adults named “The Rainbows” has been tapped to host.

A lifelong children’s literacy advocate, the Roots actor continues to use his voice on his podcast LeVar Burton Reads to narrate stories by Neil Gaiman, Haruki Murakami, Octavia Butler, Ray Bradbury, and more. In addition, he has also partnered with Fable to launch a book club and a recommendations series.

“Stories have been a central part of my life since I was a child,” Burton told Comic Book. “They have the power to feed our imaginations and explore the very nature of our existence here on earth and beyond,” Burton said. “Stories can even bring us closer together as human beings. For me, books are more than words strung together. They are portals into existences of every variety, stripe, and hue; the universe and all there is, captured in the pages of good books!”

BLACK ENTERPRISE previously reported that Burton would be hosting the upcoming 94th Scripps National Spelling Bee on June 1 and June 2, 2022, near Washington, D.C.