Children's Authors and Illustrators: An Index to Biographical Dictionaries (review)

For librarians, researchers, students, teachers, and writers in the field of literature for children, this book will be a very valuable reference tool. It is exactly as the title indicates, an index to resource biographical dictionaries. Despite its price, this useful tool should be in all libraries, and most especially in university libraries.

The book is a great aid in researching an author or illustrator as it lists in one simple entry all the sources for biographical information of this type that one would generally use plus several others. It includes not only persons working directly in our field, but those whose works have been taken over by children, and some adults whose work could be classified as for children. Some entrants are debatable. Others are little known, and therefore their inclusion in this book is helpful for researchers.

The 3rd edition has indexed some 20,000 children's authors and illustrators. There are 100,00+ references made to 275 primary biographical sources. Entries list the author's name, dates of birth and death, followed by abbreviations of the biographical sources. The key to the abbreviations is listed in both the front and back end papers, which is helpful as the book is a thick one.

All the entries are in dictionary form. If the subject used one or more pseudonyms or other forms of his/her name, these are listed in the main entry following the citations. The pseudonym(s) is also listed, but with only the biographical sources in which it appears, with a cross reference to the subject's real name.

Space is provided around each entry for the user/owner to write in additional information or notes as needed or desired. Full bibliographic information for each source used is to be found in the very front of the text.

An example of the type of entry is:

Craig, Mary Francis (1923- )

    ConAu IR, IntAu&W 77, SmATA 6,

    ThrBJA, WhoAmW 74, WhoAmW 77,

    WrDr 76, Wr Dr 80

    Pseud./variant:

        Shura, Mary Francis

Shura, Mary Francis

    BioIn 9, BioIn 10, ConAu X, ForWC 70,

    IntAu&W 76, WrDr80

    Main entry Craig, Mary Francis

Periodicals referred to are those listed in "Biography Index" only. Citations are not included on the basis of the worthiness of the source but simply because the subject was entered in the source cited. All known pseudonyms are listed, which is extremely useful in research. This latest edition is greatly expanded in coverage over the others and it does include all entries in the earlier title.