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Information Resources on Children's Literature |
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We have four categories of library resources:
| Children's Books | Lists/Bibliographies
of Children's Literature |
| Guides to Using Children's Literature in the Classroom | Books
on Issues in Children's Literature |
We have, in fact, a pretty good collection of children's literature. It will be found in the CURRICULUM COLLECTION in the Main Stacks. This is a room whose entrance is at the far end of Rows 52-53. We have virtually all of the Newbery and Caldecott winners, and, for the last 10 years or so have been receiving all of the winners and runners up in a number of different children's book award programs, like Coretta Scott King, American Library Association's Notable Book/Best Book listings, Boston Globe, Scott O'Dell, and more. It all adds up to a pretty substantial set. And, of course, there are good collections in the local public libraries.
All of these books are listed in OSCAR with Location listed as Orradre Curriculum. If you want to browse this collection, go in the Curriculum Room and look at the books with call numbers beginning PZ.
If you want to find out if we have a children's book on a certain subject, most of them can be identified by doing a simple keyword searching using a word or phrase for the topic, like animals and combining that with this Boolean OR phrase:
juvenile literature or juvenile fiction
So, to find all of the children's books we have related to animals, you could do a keyword search like this:
animals and (juvenile literature or juvenile fiction)
Always keep in mind in searching, though, that there may be other relevant words/phrase. In this example, if a book was about one particular type of animal, like tigers or gorillas, the above search might not have retrieved it.To allow for such alternatives, you would need to modify your search statement:
(animals or gorillas or tigers) and (juvenile literature or juvenile fiction)
Below are some examples. Find more by doing a KEYWORD search on Oscar using this general strategy:
(books or literature) and teaching and (elementary/secondary/primary)
We have a lot of bibliographies of children's books. Most of them are grouped together in the Reference Collection around the call number Z 1037. A few are listed below, but, to find more do a keyword search on Oscar along these lines:
childrens and literature and bibliography and add a keyword/phrase describing the subject area or type, e.g. multicultural*, science.
A to zoo : subject access to children's picture books
Reference Z1037 .L715 1998
Once upon a heroine : 450 books for girls to love
Reference Z1037 .C77 1998
Native Americans in fiction
Reference Z 1232 .A53 1994
Latina and Latino voices in literature for children and teenagers
Z1229.H57 D3 1997
Read across America : exploring 7 U.S. regions through popular children's literature
Folio LB1050.2 .R67 1995
Multicultural picture books : art for understanding others
Folio Z1037 .M267 1994
Best books for children : preschool through grade 6
Reference Z1037 .G48 2002
There are, indeed, issues in children's literature! Find these in Oscar by doing a KEYWORD search using this phrase in your search:
children* and (literature or books or stories)
along with a keyword/phrase for the "issue", like gender, multicultural* (the asterisk allows for variations of the form of the word, e.g multiculturalism).
Here are a few titles to entice you:
Book bridges for ESL students : using young adult and children's literature to teach ESL
PE1128.A2 R454 2002
Children's literature and the politics of equality
Z1037.A1 P56 1997
Inside picture books
BF456.R2 S685 1999
On reading books to children
LB1573.5 .O62 2003
Using multicultural literature to teach K-4 social studies : a thematic unit approach
LB1530 .E39 2002
What are little girls made of? : a guide to female role models in children's books
PS374.G55 A55 1999
Probably the best all around guide to children's literature web resources is the Children's Literature Web Guide, brought to you by David K. Brown, the director of the Doucette Library of Teaching Resources at the University of Calgary. A unique tool for teachers here is the Doucette Index of Teaching Ideas. You enter the title of a book or an author, and you will be given a list of guides/aids/suggestions for using the book in the classroom. These aids can be references to books or parts of books (of course, with their call numbers in U of Calgary, but you can look them up in Oscar!) or links to web resources for that book/author as well.
A good source for information in general about children's literature is, quite logically, the Association for Library Services to Children. Among other things, they have a nice page listing award-winning books. Be sure to also look at what they have For Teachers!
The Database of Award Winning Children's Literature is a good place to find the "perfect book". You can specify the age of the reader, ethnicity of the character(s), historical period, setting, genre, award, and then also keyword search the description. It is done by a Reference Librarian at California State University San Bernardino. Another very nifty tool is the Children's Picture Book Database, from Miami University, designed to assist teachers and student-teachers in creating literature-based thematic units. It contains abstracts of over 4500 children's picture books and is searchable by over 950 different keywords of three different types, topics (e.g. tiger, beach, train), concepts (somewhat more abstract, like moods, technology, nature), and skills (e.g skating, writing, coping).
If you find that it is harder to find books for boys, visit Guys Read, started by author Jon Scieszka to encourage reading among boys all of ages. The site is rather thin right now, but it does contain some useful reading lists and there is a forum area for site users to add recommendations of favorite books for guys.
The International Children's Digital Library (ICDL) is a project of the University of Maryland. Their mission is " ... to select, collect, digitize, and organize children's materials in their original languages and to create appropriate technologies for access and use by children 3-13 years old." It's quite a mission, but they are doing it! You can search by title, author/illustrator, language, keyword or publication date. You can also browse books in a category. Categories include things like feelings, genre, length, a real mixed bag! TIP: From the opening screen, click on Enter Library to get started exploring.
See what the young readers of California like by visiting the webpage of California Young Reader Medal.
Get reviews of books and, even better, lots of advice on how to use them in the classroom from author/consultant Carol Hurst's Children's Literature Site. This is a treasure trove for teachers. Sign up, too, for the free newsletter!
Get connected with the Child Lit electronic discussion list focusing on children's literature criticism and theory. It is unmoderated and ". . .exists for anyone interested in discussing aspects of these broad fields, including authorship, illustration, publication, promotion, readership, reception, criticism and literature's changing social functions and implications . . . specifically conceived to foster the sharing of ideas by researchers engaged in original scholarship." (quoted from their homepage)
The Horn Book Virtual History Exhibit celebrates the 75th Anniversary of The Horn Book, the premier magazine of children's literature. For any lover of children's literature, it is a true GEM!
Famous authors and books have their own pages, too. Some of these are really grand. Start your search for these through the Shy Librarian's Children's Author and Illustrator Links Find them by going to the Librarians Index to the Internet, or Infomine, or Scout Report, and doing a keyword search, as in Winnie the Pooh or Dr Seuss, or, of course, Harry Potter!
If you are ready to really do some research, then you need to search our two big education databases, Education Fulltext and ERIC. We have dandy online guides to both, Short Guide to Searching Education Fulltext and Searching ERIC on the WWW. The ERIC guide is a powerpoint slide show that requires Internet Explorer 5.0 and up. You can download the powerpoint file itself at http://itrs.scu.edu/library_tutorials/eric_powerpoint/ericslides.ppt.
In addition, you can make an appointment with me, or email me, for some additional guidance specifically for your research topic.
This page created and maintained by
Gail Gradowski
Reference Department
Orradre Library
Santa Clara University
Created April, 2000
Last Updated February 25, 2004