Books Received

The Ashgate Encyclopedia of Literary and Cinematic Monsters. Edited by Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2014.

Although this reference work does not focus on children’s literature, it includes entries that deal with books, films, and video games intended for children and young adults. Of particular interest to children’s literature scholars are Gretchen Papazian’s “Monsters in Children’s Literature” and Anne Hiebert Alton’s “Monsters in Harry Potter.”

Children’s Literature. 2nd ed. By M. O. Grenby. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2014.

Part of a series titled Edinburgh Critical Guides to Literature, this book provides a concise history of British and North American children’s literature from the seventeenth century to the present. Like the first edition, which appeared in 2008, this volume is organized around various types of children’s literature. Each chapter traces the history of a particular genre: fables; poetry; moral tales and problem novels; the school story; the family story; fantasy; the adventure story; and illustrations and picture books, the latter new to this edition. The other chapters have been fully revised and updated.

The Common Core in Grades 4–6. Edited by Roger Sutton and Daryl Grabarek. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014.

This guide provides annotations to approximately two hundred nonfiction books that are well suited to classroom use. The editors selected recently published books geared toward helping elementary school teachers respond to the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). The volume also includes a substantial introduction by Mary Ann Cappiello and Myra Zarnowski on “Putting Nonfiction to Work in Schools: The Challenges and Opportunities of Implementing CCSS.”

RISE: A Children’s Literacy Journal vol. 1, no. 1 (2014). Edited by Mark I. West.

This new journal is intended for parents, teachers, and children’s librarians. Among the articles included in this inaugural issue are Claudia Mills’s “School Days, School Days”; Judy Rosenbaum’s “The Timeless Appeal of A Wrinkle in Time”; Anita Moss’s “Remembering E. L. Konigsburg (1930–2013)”; and Sarah Minslow’s “Considering the Common Core: Literary Fiction Is the Heart of the Matter.”