Books Received

Books Received

Crossing Boundaries with Children's Books. Edited by Doris Gebel. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2006.

Sponsored by the United States Board on Books for Young People, this annotated bibliography focuses on recent children's books from or set outside of the United States. The nearly 700 books included are organized first by region and then by country (73 countries are represented). The book also includes several essays on the challenges involved with translating children's books from non-English-speaking nations into English.

David Almond: Memory and Magic. By Don Latham. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2006.

This book is part of a series titled Scarecrow Studies in Young Adult Literature. The book begins with an introduction to David Almond's life and then provides analyses of Almond's major works, including Counting Stars,Skellig,Kit's Wilderness, and Clay.

Developing Literacy in Second-Language Learners: Report of the National Literacy Panel on Language-Minority Children and Youth. Edited by Diane August and Timothy Shanahan. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2006.

None of the twenty-one chapters in this book deals directly with children's literature, but several of them address issues related to the teaching of language arts to children for whom English is not their first language.

Hans Christian Andersen: The Complete Stories. Translated by Jean Hersholt. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005.

Published in conjunction with the British Library, this massive collection of Andersen's stories is intended to serve as a commemoration of the 200th anniversary of Andersen's birth. This volume also includes nearly 100 illustrations by some of the most important illustrators from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Jacqueline Briggs Martin and You. By Jacqueline Briggs Martin (with Sharron L. McElmeel). Westport, CT: Libraries Unlimited, 2006.

The fifth volume in a series titled The Author and You, this autobiographical work is intended for children. However, the book includes information that would be of interest to children's literature scholars, such as anecdotes related to the research and writing of Snowflake Bentley and several of Martin's other picture books.

Reading The Lord of the Rings: New Writings on Tolkien's Classic. Edited by Robert Eaglestone. New York and London: Continuum, 2005.

The essays in this collection address both Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings as well as Peter Jackson's film adaptations of Tolkien's trilogy. Several of the essays deal with issues related to gender, sexuality, and class. The book also includes two essays about forms of "new media" that deal with Tolkien's work, such as electronic games.

Well-Dressed Role Models: The Portrayal of Women in Biographies for Children. By Gale Eaton. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2006.

Biographies for children seldom attract the attention of literary critics and cultural historians, but Gale Eaton shows that an analysis of this neglected genre can yield intriguing results. Eaton provides close readings of numerous juvenile biographies of notable women published between the mid-1940s and the mid-1990s. She explains how changes in societal attitudes toward women during this fifty-year period are reflected in how these biographies portray the lives of famous women.

What Was It Like? Teaching History and Culture through Young Adult Literature. By Linda J. Rice. New York: Teachers College Press, 2006.

Intended as a practical resource for middle and high school teachers, this book provides detailed information on how to incorporate historical novels in the teaching of such subjects as the Great Depression, the Holocaust, the Japanese internment camps, the Civil Rights Movement, and the Vietnam War.