The Children's CIA

While looking up something at the CIA World Factbook today, I noticed that they have a kids' page. On that kids' page are some neat games, including one in which the player analyzes a photograph to produce useful information.

https://www.cia.gov/kids-page/games/aerial-analysis-challenge/index.html

Once you are done with that, there is the Photo Analysis Challenege, in which you compare the differences between two similar photos of the "same" stretch of a city street.

https://www.cia.gov/kids-page/games/photo-analysis-challenge/index.html

More Games: https://www.cia.gov/kids-page/games/index.html

- Jason Carter

NER

The Librarian's Guide to Gaming

An online toolkit for building gaming at your library.
This site was just posted (Mar 2, 2009)by ALA and includes tools and resources, best practices, and even a calendar of conferences and events relating to gaming: traditional, electronic, theory, and education.

And here is a pdf file with a few board games for a wide range of ages, mostly elementary.

Share a Story - Shape a Future - a literacy blog event from ALSC

(To see this article with enabled links got to the ALSC Facebook Page Note.)


During the week of March 9 - 13, please come visit Share a Story - Shape a Future. Each day, a different blog host will feature links to blog posts on a variety of topics having to do with children and literacy. Here is the schedule as of today, but please check the event blog for updated information, as the event is growing by the day.

Day 1 - March 9: Raising Readers
hosted by Terry Doherty at Scrub-a-Dub-Tub, the Reading Tub blog

* Finding Time at Home - Tricia Stohr-Hunt @ The Miss Rumphius Effect
* Making Time in the Classroom - Sarah Mulhern @ The Reading Zone
* Helping a Reader in Need (remedial readers) - Sandra Stiles guest post on Scrub-a-Dub-Tub
* It’s Bigger than the Book: Building Strong Readers at any Age with a Daily Dose of Read Aloud - Cathy Miller interview on the Share a Story - Shape a Future blog
* Keeping Gifted Readers Engaged - Donalyn Miller @ The Book Whisperer

Day 2 - March 10: Selecting Reading Material
hosted by Sarah Mulhern at The Reading Zone

* The ABCs of Reading: Infants, Toddlers & Preschoolers - Valerie Baartz on The Almost Librarian
* How to Help Emerging Readers - Anastasia Suen @5 Great Books NEW LOCATION!
* Helping Middle Grade Readers - Sarah Mulhern @ The Reading Zone
* Booklists and Read Alikes - Sarah Mulhern @ The Reading Zone
* Using Non-fiction - Mary Lee Hahn of A Year of Reading, hosted by the Stenhouse blog

Day 3 - March 11: Reading Aloud - It’s Fun, It’s Easy
hosted by Susan Stephenson at the Book Chook blog

* Ten Terrific Tips from Read-aloud Queen, Mem Fox - on the Book Chook blog
* Conquering Stage Fright - Interview with Sarah Mulhern/The Reading Zone @ the Book Chook
* Reading Aloud With Kids: A Dad’s Perspective - hosted by Steven and Brian at Book Dads: Fathers that Read
* Using Technology for Read Alouds - Sarah Mulhern @ The Reading Zone
* What to Do When the Reading is Done - Aimee Buckner, hosted by the Stenhouse blog
* Reading Aloud with Independent Readers - Donalyn Miller @ The Book Whisperer

Day 4 - March 12: A Visit to the Library
hosted by Eva Mitnick at Eva’s Book Addiction blog

* From Cozy to Cool - Library Spaces for Everyone - Eva @ Eva’s Book Addiction
* Lions and Marble and Books, Oh My - Betsy Bird at A Fuse #8 Production
* How to Make the Library Work for YOU - an interview with Adrienne of What Adrienne Thinks About That conducted by Jules at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast
* The World Beyond the Library’s Walls - Melissa @ Librarian by Day

Day 5 - March 13: Technology and Reading - What the Future Holds
is hosted by Elizabeth O. Dulemba at Dulemba.com

* Audiobooks with Bruce Coville of Full Cast Audio and Mary Burkey of Audiobooker
* E-books with Harold Underdown of The Purple Crayon and Sheila Ruth of Wands and Worlds
* Podcasts with Andrea Ross of Just One More Book! and Cheryl Rainfield of cherylrainfield.com
* A resource of links to audiobooks, e-books, podcasts and webcasts @ Dulemba.com.

There will be plenty of giveaways, contests, and links to cool stuff, and most of all - inspiring and insightful posts by children’s literature bloggers. Guests will be invited to share their own knowledge and love of reading as well. Please tell parents and teachers and fellow children’s librarians about this blog event. See you then!

Character Counts Booklist

Need to find books that teach specific character traits?

You can find a list at http://charactercounts.org/resources/booklist.php

The booklist includes books ranging from the Grouchy Ladybug to Jacob Have I Loved. It includes author, title, number of pages, type of book, and which trait the book illustrates. Some of the books seem a little outdated, but some books are still in demand and in the FLP system.

The 6 character traits are: trustworthiness, respect, responsibility, fairness, caring, and citizenship.

Some Old Favorites New

http://www.mothergooserocks.com/

These Aren't Your Child's Picture Books Anymore

A middle school teacher wants Leo Lionni books to teach her students how to make inferences. A historical preservationist is reinvigorated by Virginia Lee Burton’s The Little House. Two teenagers flirt and read Wee Little Chick to one another. Picture books are not just for children anymore.

The graphic novel naissance—comics renaissance—has provided entry for a new way of seeing and engaging with picture books. The marriage of picture with text or picture with wordless narrative is no longer just the first step of the serious American reader. Illustrated books with and without words are accepted for all ages, thanks to the successes of the graphic novel. This brings us to the humble picture book and the ways in which graphic novels and picture books have been colliding and expanding and exploding conventions. When American Born Chinese, The Red Book, Zen Shorts, The Invention of Hugo Cabret, and The Wall are award winners, we know there must be a sea-change.

I rediscovered picture books as a children’s librarian—no better way, perhaps. While I loved them as a child, I never thought of them as I traveled the typical reader’s trajectory: reading books for children, books for young adults and books for adults. I love children’s and young adult books because of my work. Most likely I would not have discovered their joys elsewhere. When people think of books—if they think of them at all—they adhere to a linear path linking human development and reading. Surely, reading picture books is regressing! Onward and upward, today Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, tomorrow Moby-Dick.

Like any range of literature, picture books can be gentle or challenging, in the terms of their language, themes, design, and images. Picture books can approach a difficult and complicated subject in a comforting and low-pressure way and they can provoke teen and adult readers to look deeply, intentionally, and closely at content that children might miss.

So what can result from interactions between teens and picture books? Teens can learn about book design in Black and White, The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales, and The Three Pigs; spirituality in Samsara Dog and The Three Questions; “wolves” in Wolves and The Woolves in the Sitee; animal biology (in rhyme!) in Chickens Aren’t the Only Ones; art elements in Hello, Fruit Face! The Paintings of Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Nina’s Book of Little Things, and Voices in the Park; war and violence in Patrol:An American Soldier in Vietnam, The Letter Home, The Butter Battle Book, and Rose Blanche; and death in Michael Rosen’s Sad Book and To Hell With Dying.

Librarians must educate patrons that the picture book is a format not always prescribed for very young children. This is a challenge when we are constantly asked for the 4-year old, 6-year old, and 12-year old sections and we dutifully point to picture books, easy readers, and chapter books. But we can inform parents and teachers of the myriad ways picture books can be used with teens. Picture books can be microcosmic in the multitudes contained in their brevity. Jon Muth’s books sometimes seem to teach us all we need to know about Buddhism.

Picture books can be used with reluctant readers and visual learners, they can be paired with novels or nonfiction works in history lessons, they can initiate art and design projects, draw on art historical connections and critical thinking strategies, and rekindle the personal experience with literature. As students begin deciphering textual meaning, they can use picture book connections to learn about character development, language, and theme. While we think of storytime as an essentially preschool activity, collaborative out loud engagement with text and image can be pursued with teens.

For the picture book to fulfill its programming potential, it would be ideal to cultivate a young adult collection of picture books. This may be a cataloging or administrative challenge, but as we see graphic novels collected in up to three locations in a building, a home for young adult picture books seems possible. While many children’s picture books can be used successfully with teens, avoiding redundancy is probably desired. There are many picture books that work more deeply and better with teens than with children and would probably get more love in a YA division. Some resources to check out include: http://readwritethink.org, http://vue.org, http://www.picturebookart.org, and http://www.wiredforyouth.com/books/index.cfm?booklist=picture

Titles mentioned
Brannen, Sarah. Uncle Bobby’s Wedding
Browne, Anthony. Voices From the Park
Burton, Virginia Lee. The Little House
Decker, Tim. The Letter Home
Gravett, Emily. Wolves
Haring, Keith. Nina’s Book of Little Things
Heller, Ruth. Chickens Aren’t the Only Ones
Innocenti, Roberto. Rose Blanche
Lionni, Leo.
Lehman, Barbara. The Red Book
Macaulay, David. Black and White
Manos, Helen and Julie Vivas. Samsara Dog
Muth, Jon. The Three Questions
Myers, Walter Dean. Patrol: An American Soldier in Vietnam
Richardson, Justin. And Tango Makes Three
Rosen, Michael. Michael Rosen’s Sad Book
Scieska, Jon and Lane Smith. The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales.
Selznick, Brian. The Invention of Hugo Cabret
Seuss, Dr. The Butter Battle Book
Sís, Peter. The Wall
Strand, Claudia. Hello, Fruit Face! The Paintings of Giuseppe Arcimboldo
Thompson, Lauren. Wee Little Chick
Walker, Alice. To Hell With Dying
Wiesner, David. Three Little Pigs
Wild, Margaret and Anne Spudvilas. Woolves in the Sitee
Yang, Gene Luen. American Born Chinese

Good eatin'! Toddler storytime, 7/29/08

Storytime today was yummy yummy in our tummies!

We read:

• Lunch written and ill. by Denise Fleming

• "Hi, Pizza Man!" by Virginia Walter, ill. by Ponder Goembel

• If You Give a Mouse a Cookie by Laura Joffe Numeroff; ill. by Felicia Bond

We sang:

• Another rendition of "Jello in the Bowl" with added verses: Jello in my mouth, jello in my hair, jello on my hands, jello in my belly...
• "I Like to Eat Apples and Bananas" by Raffi - We also sang a version with "I like to eat, eat, eat pepperoni pizza" to transition into Hi, Pizza Man!
• "The Donut Song" - Lots of lyrics variations at this site!
• "There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly" - Sung with a puppet! I used the traditional, "She's dead, of course" line, and it didn't seem to traumatize any of the toddlers too deeply. Phew. Do any of you use an alternative line for that part, and how does it go over?

Bonus food fun!


Cookie is good enough for me! None of this fruits and vegetables nonsense. ;) (I hope this video's lyrics have not been dubbed over with something obscene - apparently that is quite the YouTube trend and I don't have my sound on at work!)

Clips Continuing Kate's Comment

The Clip Kate Mentioned:




Another Similar Clip:



"One World, One Love" y'all.

We love to boogie! Toddler storytime, 7/22/08

We shook it all about in toddler storytime at CHH today! I'm hoping to get my hands on some of those floaty chiffon scarves for next time so the kids can do their very own fruity interpretive dances. ;)

We read:








Wiggle by Doreen Cronin; ill. by Scott Menchin - Everyone wiggled along with the silly dog in this bold, colorful picture book. Lots of giggling during the part about "wiggle in your underwear!"
Baby Danced the Polka by Karen Beaumont; ill. by Jennifer Plecas - This one has lots of flaps that reveal animals gettin' down with a baby who just won't take a nap. The rhymes are so compelling and they allow the kids to shout out the animal name as the flap is opened.
Rap a Tap Tap! Here's Bojangles - Think of That! written and illustrated by Leo and Diane Dillon - Ah, classic Dillon illustrations and a catchy call-and-response rhyme: "Rap a tap tap! Think of that!" The kids liked tapping their feet and clapping their hands as they repeated it.

We sang:

• "Jello in the Bowl" (All you do is sing "Jello in the bowl, jello in the bowl, wibble wobble wibble wobble, jello in the bowl" to the tune of "Farmer in the Dell!" If you have a smaller group the kids stand in a circle and each toddler takes a turn dancing in the middle while everyone sings. We just have too many to do that here!)
• "Shake My Sillies Out" by Raffi
• "The Hokey Pokey"

What are some of your favorite books and songs for the dancing queens and kings in your storytime?

**Fun bonus video to brighten your day**
Matt Harding started a viral phenomenon on YouTube when he filmed himself doing a stupid dance in various locations around the globe. Doesn't seem terribly exciting, but his videos now have millions of views. I won't lie, I get all teary every time I watch them, in a good way. His latest video was featured on Astronomy Picture of the Day today. Watch it and wiggle your waggles away!

Rub-a-dub-dub! Toddler storytime, 7/15/0

I could not believe how crazy our packed house of toddlers went for this splish-splashy storytime! And they say kids don't like bathtime. The caregivers really got into it too, and it was certainly the most fun this librarian has had in a while. My voice now sounds like Kermit the Frog with emphysema (a phrase shamelessly stolen from YA author John Green) from sing-shouting the books, but it was worth it.

We read:








Big Red Tub by Julia Jarman; illustrated by Adrian Reynolds - We just got a fresh copy of this at CHH so I decided to give it a test drive. Huge hit! It's fantastical in a way that's appealing to toddlers, with various animals joining kids Stan and Stella in the tub and eventually sailing around the world.
Scrubbly Bubbly Car Wash by Irene O'Garden; illustrated by Cynthia Jabar - This one flopped a little, relatively speaking. Our copy wasn't large enough for the audience to really see the colorful illustrations. If I can figure out a way to make it more interactive - the cumulative rhyme didn't seem to do it - I'd use it again.
I Ain't Gonna Paint No More by Karen Beaumont; illustrated by David Catrow - This is one of my all-time favorite picture books. You can literally sing the entire thing to "It Ain't Gonna Rain No More," and it's hilarious. The kids pick up on the rhymes quickly and are able to predict what will happen next.
Bonus book: Don't Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late written and illustrated by Mo Willems - This really has nothing to do with bathtime, except that after a bath you usually have to go to bed. The main reason I used it was that Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus was so popular a few weeks ago, and the kids get a kick out of yelling "No!!!" at the pigeon. They liked this one too!

We sang:
"(I wash my) Head, Shoulders, Knees & Toes"
"This is the way we wash our ____" (I supplied the first few suggestions - hands, face, etc. - and then the kids could yell out other body parts. Luckily they were all G-rated. :))
"It Ain't Gonna Rain No More" (to practice for I Ain't Gonna Paint No More)

What have you been reading and singing with your young patrons, toddlers or otherwise, this week?

Crazy creatures! Toddler storytime, 7/8/08

I'm going to try to post the books we read and songs we sing at CHH every week. Feel free to critique, make other suggestions, or steal for your own use!

This week was nothing terribly special, but it sure was fun. The (loose) theme was silly creatures.

We read:







I'm the Biggest Thing in the Ocean by Kevin Sherry
Go Away, Big Green Monster! by Ed Emberley
"Hi Pizza Man!" by Virginia Walter

We sang:
"Shake My Sillies Out"
"Down By the Bay"
"If You're a Monster and You Know It" (sung to If You're Happy and You Know it, with fun actions like growling, stomping, and scaring your friend!)

I'd love if others would post their storytime suggestions too. I present to roughly the same group of 20-30 toddlers and their caregivers every week, so I really need to ramp up my repertoire!

Resources

Resources – Use this label for general print resources well as people, e.g. "Liz is a great resource for Lapsit programs!" Use the label Websites in addition to this one if your resource is online.

New York Times - March 16, 2008
Ideas & Trends
Start Writing the Eulogies for Print Encyclopedias
By NOAM COHEN
IT has never been easier to read up on a favorite topic, whether it’s an obscure philosophy, a tiny insect or an overexposed pop star. Just don’t count on being able to thumb through the printed pages of an encyclopedia to do it.
A series of announcements from publishers across the globe in the last few weeks suggests that the long migration to the Internet has picked up pace, and that ahead of other books, magazines and even newspapers, the classic multivolume encyclopedia is well on its way to becoming the first casualty in the end of print.
Back in the 1990s, Encyclopaedia Britannica led the pack in coming to terms with the idea that the public no longer viewed ownership of the multivolume compendium of information as a ticket to be punched on the way to the upper middle class — or at least as the oracle of first resort for copying a book report.
Sales of Britannica’s 32 volumes peaked in 1990, but in the next six years, they dropped 60 percent, and the company moved quickly to reinvent itself online. In 1996, Britannica eliminated its legendary staff of 1,000 door-to-door salesmen, already down from a high of 2,000 in the 1970s, in the face of competition from Microsoft’s Encarta encyclopedia for home computers.
Jorge Aguilar-Cauz, president of Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc., a private company based in Chicago, said that the print edition was still profitable, but that sales were just 10 percent of what they were in 1990. Customers are mostly schools and libraries.
It was only last month, however, that the publisher of Germany’s foremost multivolume encyclopedia, Brockhaus, took similar action, announcing that in April it would be putting online, free, all 300,000 of its articles, vetted by scholars over 200 years of print editions. (Brockhaus hopes to make money by selling ads on its site.) At the same time, the publishing house said it couldn’t promise that it would ever produce another print edition, something it has done regularly since the encyclopedia appeared in Leipzig in 1808.
Publishers in Denmark and France, too, are rethinking the commercial viability of their encyclopedias. A one-volume French encyclopedia, Quid, lost its publisher last month, and may only survive online. The largest publisher in Denmark, Gyldendal, has decided that the subscription plan for its online encyclopedia is misguided (it stopped a print edition in 2006). It plans to come up with another way to support itself.
“There is some kind of sadness,” said Nicole Weiffen-Aumann, a spokeswoman for Brockhaus, “but on the other side, many people are happy, looking forward to our new product — both things you can find in our company.” She added: “There are many people that say, ‘When I was very young I bought my first encyclopedia from Brockhaus, and there will be no next edition, I can’t believe it.’ ”
The Encyclopedia Americana still has good sales in print volumes, said Greg Worrell, president of Scholastic Classroom and Library Group, but the company is focusing on its online outlets. He said it was still determining a print plan, but added, “the likelihood is there will not be the 2009 multivolume print version.”
To scholars, the ready access to updated information online is a net gain for the public. But that doesn’t mean that they can’t mourn the passing of a household icon — a set of knowledge-packed books on their own reserved shelves that even parents had to defer to.
“I remember in my own childhood in the 1940s, early ’50s, I and my parents would sit around the table and look at the encyclopedia together,” said Larry Hickman, director of a center at Southern Illinois University devoted to the education pioneer John Dewey. “In the old days, the Encyclopaedia Britannica or the World Book encyclopedia was regarded as authoritative,” he recalled, laughing as he agreed, “That’s why you would copy it for your book report.”
But Mr. Hickman said that parents and children can have the same discussions “seated in front of the computer, the electronic hearth, as I like to call it.” And he said that losing a set of books considered infallible was actually a good thing for developing critical thinking.
Yet, as encyclopedia publishers struggle, the Internet age has become a golden one for the newer kind of encyclopedia.
An ambitious project to catalog online all known species on earth — with the even-more-ambitious title the Encyclopedia of Life — went live last month. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, a project that began online in 1995 and has never been in print and never will be, is chugging along with nearly 1,000 entries that are vetted by an academic board of more that 100 scholars for a total of 10 million words.
And then there is the behemoth Wikipedia, a project that has no board to vet articles and is created by thousands of volunteers, with more than two million articles in English and an additional five million in a babel of other languages.
Wikipedia is regularly among the top 10 most visited sites on the Internet throughout the world — maybe in part because there’s a lot more there than meets the needs of the average term paper. The superabundance of less-than-prized information on the site has led to a phenomenon called “wiki-groaning,” which involves comparing the length of seemingly disparate articles to humorous effect. Lightsaber Combat beats out Modern Warfare, for example, and John Locke, the character from the TV show “Lost,” edges out the other John Locke, whoever he was.
Encyclopedia publishers, while taking swipes at Wikipedia’s unreliability since it can be edited by anyone, have clearly adopted some of its lessons. They are incorporating more photographs and suggestions from readers to improve online content, and they are committed to updating material as facts change.
Britannica says it updates an article every 20 minutes. Even the Stanford Philosophy Encyclopedia will make changes with relative speed. When a law was passed on voluntary euthanasia in the Netherlands, “our entry was updated within a couple of weeks, at the latest,” said Edward N. Zalta, a senior research scholar at Stanford and principal editor of the online encyclopedia. “It may have been a day or two — we don’t do it as quickly as Wikipedia, but in a timely way.”
In essence, the Internet is justifying the hubris of early compilers like Linnaeus, the father of taxonomy, said Edward O. Wilson, the expert on insects at Harvard who spearheaded the Encyclopedia of Life and serves as honorary chairman. “There were so few species to deal with, only in the thousands,” he said. “He and his disciples thought they could do the rest of the flora and fauna of the world. Boy, were they wrong.”
In the intervening centuries, Professor Wilson said, science was taken over by specialists. But by allowing specialists to pool their knowledge on a Web site, he said, the Encyclopedia of Life will be able to come close to the dream of a compendium of all the known species in the world.
“Once we get all the information in one place, think of the impact this will have — available to anybody, anywhere, anytime,” he said.
Asked about his own experience with encyclopedias, Professor Wilson said, “I grew up in Alabama — we didn’t have things like the Encyclopaedia Britannica in our home.” What he did have were field guides. “All the field guides — for snakes, butterflies, turtles. Back in the 40s, I had my butterfly nets, and I was right up to date through my guides,” Professor Wilson said.
He added: “There are nerds that say we will have something the size of a field guide, and punch in something. Maybe I am hopelessly old fashioned, but a kid with a knapsack, and a Boy Scout or Girl Scout manual, printed, a field guide on snakes or butterflies, printed, is the best combination in the world.”
Mr. Aguilar-Cauz of Britannica is counting on that sort of nostalgic allure to keep at least some encyclopedias on bookshelves and not just hard drives. He envisioned the print volumes living on as a niche, luxury item, with high-quality paper and glossy photographs — similar to the way some audiophiles still swear by vinyl LPs and turntables. “What you need people to understand,” he said, “is that it is a luxury experience. You want to be able to produce a lot of joy, a paper joy.”

edited to add tags

Three Titles of Interest

Here are three books (2 are dated, but I believe still quite relevant) you might find of interest as a general resource and for use in your children's librarianship research:

1) The Kids' Book Club Book: Reading Ideas, Recipes, Activities, and Smart Tips for Organizing Terrific Kids' Book Clubs. Judy Gelman and Vicki Levy Krupp. NY:Jeremy P.Tarcher/Penguin. 2007. 460 pp. paperback.$16.95.

Editorial Reviews(from Amazon)
The first complete guide-for use by adults and children-to creating fun and educational book clubs for kids.

As authors of The Book Club Cookbook, the classic guide to integrating great food and food-related discussion into book club gatherings, Judy Gelman and Vicki Levy Krupp hear a common refrain from parents, librarians, teachers, community leaders and kids themselves: "How about writing a book for kids' book clubs?" Indeed, in recent years youth organizations, parents, libraries, schools, and our local, state, and federal governments have launched thousands of book clubs for children as a way to counter falling literacy rates and foster a love of reading. Based on surveys representing five hundred youth book clubs across the country and interviews with parents, kids, educators, and librarians, The Kids' Book Club Book features:

_- the top fifty favorite book club reads for children ages eight to eighteen;
_- ideas and advice on forming great kids' book clubs-and tips for kids who want to start their own book clubs;
_- recipes, activities, and insights from such bestselling children's book authors as Christopher Paolini, Lois Lowry, Jerry Spinelli, Nancy Farmer, Christopher Paul Curtis, Andrew Clements, Laurie Halse Anderson, Norton Juster, and many others.

From recipes for the Dump Punch and egg salad sandwiches included in Kate DiCamillo's Because of Winn-Dixie to instructionson how to make soap carvings like the ones left in the knot-hole of a tree in Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, this book provides a bounty of ideas for making every kids' book club a success.

About the Author
JUDY GELMAN and VICKI LEVY KRUPP are book enthusiasts and cooks who came together as friends to coauthor The Book Club Cookbook: Recipes and Food for Thought from Your Book Club's Favorite Books and Authors. Both authors live with their families in the Boston area.

2)The New Press Guide to Multicultural Resources for Young Readers.Ed. Daphne Muse. NY: The New Press. 1997. 690 pp. $60.00.

Editorial Review From Booklist
This guide to multicultural literature for young people brings together more than 1,000 reviews of picture books, novels, poetry, biographies, and other resources, which cover more than 20 different multicultural communities. The purpose of the book is to provide teachers and librarians with an easy-to-use resource for multicultural materials that includes both print and nonprint titles and identifies the best of these titles. Arrangement is thematic. Each chapter covers a different theme, such as community, family, cultural traditions and ethnic stereotyping, immigration, and justice and human rights. Within each chapter, titles are arranged first by grade level (K^-3, 4^-6, 7^-8) and then alphabetically. In addition to the reviews of resources, the guide includes a number of essays on topics in multicultural education, such as "Ethnic and Gender Stereotyping in Recent Disney Animation," "Illustrating the Point: A Commentary on Multicultural and Stereotypic Picture Books," "Teaching Culturally Diverse Students," and "CD-ROM Technology in the Multicultural Classroom." A number of these essays, such as Beverly Slapin and Jill Lessing's "Handicapism Checklist: What Do We Mean by `Handicapism'?" are reprinted from other sources.
Each chapter begins with a short introduction, signed by the author. Each review was written specifically for this volume and is signed by the author, in most cases a teacher or a librarian, and includes the following information: title, author, illustrator if applicable, publication date and publisher, and the community described in the book, such as Latino, Asian American, or Native American. Information is also provided about special availability, such as braille and foreign-language versions, and related titles. Reviews contain a brief synopsis of the story, the message it intends to convey, critical comments on the way that message is handled, and suggestions for how the title might be used in the classroom. Reviews are generally 300^-500 words long. In many cases, a photograph of the book jacket is included. Publication dates range from the 1960s to 1996, with the majority of the titles published in the 1990s.

Criteria used to assess the titles included the quality of writing and illustration, the accuracy and nuance of treatment of different cultural groups, the extent to which the title provides a new perspective, and the accessibility of text to the target audience. Children's classics and other popular titles that reflect negative stereotypes or outdated thinking may be treated critically in this volume. Most of the titles deal with African American, Native American, Latino, or Asian cultures; however, there are reviews of works that deal with European cultures. The gay/lesbian/bisexual and emotionally and physically disabled cultures are not left out of this work. Titles that reflect these cultures are critiqued as part of the editor's commitment to multicultural education.

The table of contents lists the essays included in each chapter. Theme and grade level are listed on the top of each page, making the volume easy to use. Other useful features include a time line called "Milestones in Children's Literature"; a list of catalogs, media materials, organizations, and books on children's literature; a list of children's book awards; lists of special library collections and notable bookstores; and biographical data about all of the contributors. The guide concludes with an index of titles, authors, and ethnic groups. Under ethnic group, titles are listed by page number only, which makes it cumbersome to locate all those titles dealing with Asian Americans, for example.

A number of other books on multicultural resources have been published contemporaneously. To name a few, Rebecca Thomas' Connecting Cultures: A Guide to Multicultural Literature for Children (Bowker, 1996) provides subject access to 1,600 titles. Multicultural Literature: An Annotated Bibliography, Grades K^-8, by Beth Beutler Lind (McFarland, 1996), lists 1,000 titles under four ethnic groups. This Land Is Our Land: A Guide to Multicultural Literature for Children and Young Adults (Greenwood, 1994) annotates nearly 600 books of poetry and oral tradition. The New Press Guide to Multicultural Resources for Young Readers provides good background and context, as well as longer reviews. The culmination of five years of work, it will be an essential resource for teachers and librarians. It will serve as an easy-to-use source for anyone looking for the best works to teach and learn about diversity and the many cultures that make up American life.

3) The Oxford Companion to Children's Literature. Humphrey Carpenter and Mari Pritchard. NY: Oxford University Press. 1999. $49.95. 588 pp.

Book Description (from Amazon)
The indispensable reference book for anyone concerned with children's books. Over 900 biographical entries deal with authors, illustrators, printers, publishers, educationalists, and others who have influenced the development of children's literature. The range of literature covered includes traditional narrative materials such as legends as romances; fairy tales; chapbooks; genres such as school stories, adventure stories, doll stories, and science fiction; ABC and other learning books; children's magazines, comics, and story papers; picture books; teenage novels; children's hymns; and children's stories on radio television and film. Other entries include: concise plot summaries, from familiar favourites like The Secret Garden to less well-known works such as My Friend Mr Leaky by the eminent scientist J. B. S. Haldane; characters, Andy Pandy to Tiger Tim, Captain Nemo to Shere Khan and Winnie-the-Pooh; literary and historical background, Puritans and penny dreadfuls, libraries and reviewers, racism and sexism; mythical and legendary creatures, trolls, dragons, witches, giants, dwarfs, and goblins; national surveys, including the USA, Germany, France, Italy, Denmark, Iceland, Canada, Australia, and India. Written both to entertain and instruct, The Oxford Companion to Children's Literature is a reference work no one interested in the world of children's books should be without.

About the Author
Humphrey Carpenter's books include biographies of J. R. R. Tolkien, W. H. Auden, C. S. Lewis, Ezra Pound, and Benjamin Britten. He is the author of the popular Mr Majeika series of stories for children. Mari Prichard has worked as a broadcaster and teacher, and is now a local government education officer. She and Humphrey Carpenter were married in 1973 and have two daughters.