So many books, so little time! Where do you start? With this book: Linda Silver’s guide to the most notable books for young readers. Here are a top librarian’s picks of the best in writing, illustration, reader appeal, and authentically Jewish content in picture books, fiction and non-fiction, for early childhood through the high school years. You’ll find the classics like K’tonton and the All-of-a-Kind Family books, right on to Terrible Things, Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, and today’s bestsellers, along with hundreds of others. Chapters are organized by subject and entries within each include a succinct description of the book and author, and Silver’s own insights on what makes it worth reading. There are title, subject, author, and illustrator indexes, title-grouping by reading level, and lists of award winners. A wonderful reference for parents, grandparents, teachers, librarians—and, of course, the kids so dear to them.

Published by the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY), Bookbird communicates new ideas to the whole community of readers interested in children's books, publishing work on any topic in the field of international children's literature.

The most comprehensive account of the women who, as librarians, editors, and founders of the Horn Book, shaped the modern children's book industry between 1919 and 1939. The lives of Anne Carroll Moore, Alice Jordan, Louise Seaman Bechtel, May Massee, Bertha Mahony Miller, and Elinor Whitney Field open up for readers the world of female professionalization. What emerges is a vivid illustration of some of the cultural debates of the time, including concerns about "good reading" for children and about women's negotiations between domesticity and participation in the paid labor force and the costs and payoffs of professional life.

Published in collaboration among the University of Wisconsin Press, the Center for the History of Print Culture in Modern America (a joint program of the University of Wisconsin–Madison and the Wisconsin Historical Society), and the University of Wisconsin–Madison General Library System Office of Scholarly Communication.

The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books is devoted to the review of current books for children. Providing concise summaries and critical evaluations, this invaluable resource assists readers with questions regarding the ever-evolving children's literature field. Each issue of Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books includes expert reviews by a world-renowned staff. These reviews give an in-depth look at selected book's content, reading level, strengths and weaknesses, quality of the format, as well as suggestions for circular use. The Bulletin also includes: Bulletin Blue Ribbons- a selection of the year's most distinguished titles, The Big Picture- a monthly editorial that looks at titles and trends, Professional Connections- a section featuring bibliographies, reviews of new professional books, and abstracts of research articles, and a Subject and Use Index- an index allows readers to easily locate information by referring to subjects, curricular use, and genres.

Children's Literature is the annual publication of the Modern Language Association Division on Children's Literature and the Children's Literature Association. Encouraging serious scholarship and research, Children's Literature publishes theoretically based articles that address key issues in the field. Each volume contains eight to ten articles, five to seven review essays, and an index. Some volumes also include a Varia section of shorter essays. Filled every year with outstanding articles and essays, Children's Literature has an international reputation as the pre-eminent publication in the field.

With a new look and a new editorial staff, the Children's Literature Association Quarterly continues its tradition of publishing first-rate scholarship in Children's Literature Studies. Recent articles include "The Narnian Schism: Reading the Christian Subtext as Other in the Children's Stories of C. S. Lewis," "Dusty, the Dyke Barbie," and "Playing Empire: Children's Parlor Games, Home Theatricals, and Improvisational Play." Each issue features an editorial introduction, juried articles about research and scholarship in children's literature, and book reviews. The Quarterly is available to members of the Children's Literature Association as a part of membership.

The Harlem Renaissance, the period associated with the flowering of the arts in Harlem, inaugurated a tradition of African American children's literature, for the movement's central writers made youth both their subject and audience. W.E.B. Du Bois, Carter G. Woodson, Langston Hughes, Alice Dunbar-Nelson, and other Harlem Renaissance figures took an impassioned interest in the literary models offered to children, believing that the "New Negro" would ultimately arise from black youth. As a result, African American children's literature became a crucial medium through which a disparate community forged bonds of cultural, economic, and aesthetic solidarity. Kate Capshaw Smith explores the period's vigorous exchange about the nature and identity of black childhood and uncovers the networks of African American philosophers, community activists, schoolteachers, and literary artists who worked together to transmit black history and culture to the next generation.

For more than three decades, the same children’s historical novels have been taught across the United States. Honored for their literary quality and appreciated for their alignment with social studies curricula, the books have flourished as schools moved from whole-language to phonics and from student-centered learning to standardized testing. Books like Johnny Tremain, The Witch of Blackbird Pond, Island of the Blue Dolphins, and Roll of Thunder, Hear Me Cry stimulate children’s imagination, transporting them into the American past and projecting them into an American future. As works of historical interpretation, however, many are startlingly out of step with current historiography and social sensibilities, especially with regard to race. Unlike textbooks, which are replaced on regular cycles and subjected to public tugs-of-war between the left and right, historical novels have simply—and quietly—endured. Taken individually, many present troubling interpretations of the American past. But embraced collectively, this classroom canon provides a rare pedagogical opportunity: it captures a range of interpretive voices across time and place, a kind of “people’s history” far removed from today’s state-sanctioned textbooks. Teachers who employ historical novels in the classroom can help students recognize and interpret historical narrative as the product of research, analytical perspective, and the politics of the time. In doing so, they sensitize students to the ways in which the past is put to moral and ideological uses in the present. Featuring separate chapters on American Indians, war, and slavery, Child-Sized History tracks the changes in how young readers are taught to conceptualize history and the American nation.

Disturbing the Universe: Power and Repression in Adolescent Literature by Roberta Seelinger Trites is the winner of the 2002 Children's Literature Association's Book Award. The award is given annually in order to promote and recognize outstanding contributions to children's literature, history, scholarship, and criticisim; it is one of the highest academic honors that can accrue to an author of children's literary criticism. "What makes Trites' book so significant is the grandness of its theme. She not only expounds upon the role of power in young adult literature, but she also points out that some of this literature has the potential to empower its adolescent readers. o --Mark I. West, president of the Children's Literature Association "Informed by theorists ranging from Lacan to Eagleton to Jameson to Foucault to Barthes, Disturbing the Universe is a cogent and thought-provoking work that breaks new ground in young adult literature and postmodern studies. o --Sherrie A. Inness, associate professor of English, Miami University "For many working within the field of children's literature, this book will come as a welcome addition to an expanding corpus."--The Yearbook of English Studies TheYoung Adult novel is ordinarily characterized as a coming-of-age story, in which the narrative revolves around the individual growth and maturation of a character, but Roberta Trites expands this notion by chronicling the dynamics of power and repression that weave their way through YA books. Characters in these novels must learn to negotiate the levels of power that exist in the myriad social institutions within which they function, including family, church, government, and school. Trites argues that the development of the genre over the past thirty years is an outgrowth of postmodernism, since YA novels are, by definition, texts that interrogate the social construction of individuals. Drawing on such nineteenth-century precursors as Little Women and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Disturbing the Universe demonstrates how important it is to employ poststructuralist methodologies in analyzing adolescent literature, both in critical studies and in the classroom. Among the twentieth-century authors discussed are Blume, Hamilton, Hinton, Le Guin, L'Engle, and Zindel. Trites' work has applications for a broad range of readers, including scholars of children's literature and theorists of post-modernity as well as librarians and secondary-school teachers. Roberta Trites is associate professor of English and associate dean, College of Arts and Sciences, at Illinois State University, where she teaches children's and adolescent literature. She is author of Waking Sleeping Beauty: Feminist Voices in Children's Novels (Iowa), which won an ALA Choice Award.