Children's Literature - Bibliotherapy - Indianapolis

sort by children's books, relevance (publication date, etc.), age group

Once you enter the DAWCL site you can search the database using keywords (or by many other criteria such as suggested reader age, format or language). What’s nice about this search is that all books listed have won some sort of prize, so the quality is high, and the database includes much older books, that you won’t necessarily find on Amazon.

search for “great children’s books about X” or “best kids’ books about X”. Amazon / Barnes and Noble etc links will turn up, but I tend to skip these and look for reviews in newspapers, or at websites and blogs devoted to kids and or books. If you want to cut out the links to big bookstores then add “-Amazon” or “-Amazon -Barnes -Waterstones” etc to your query ie “great children’s books about owls -Amazon” – this way all links to addresses containing the word Amazon (or Waterstones etc) will be left off the list returned to you.

I see what the Children’s Picture Book Database at Miami University turns up. Although it asks you to enter your zipcode this isn’t required to complete the search (however, if you are in the US, please do enter your zipcode – the author of this database has let me know how important this information is when applying for grants for the service) – you can just enter your keyword, or choose to do a more advanced search. What I like about this database is that it will bring up books that don’t necessarily have your keyword in the title, but that do have it in the (librarian-written) abstract. What I don’t like about the keyword search from the front page is that it sometimes brings up books that have words containing the substring of the keyword you entered – so for example, when I search for “owls” I got a couple of books about coyotes because the word “howls” was in the abstract! If you want to avoid this problem use the “Search the Database” button on the top right hand side instead – this will give you great, accurate results. Some search results are accompanied by a link to relevant, librarian-selected websites so do look out for them too.

Carol Hurst’s Children’s Literature Site is full of goodies. As Carol puts it herself, “this is a collection of reviews of great books for kids, ideas of ways to use them in the classroom and collections of books and activities about particular subjects, curriculum areas, themes and professional topics.” The page dedicated to themes and other subjects is the most useful from my perspective – it contains an alphabetical list of themes such as farms, quilts and trains. Although the list of themes is not exhaustive, if the theme you’re after is listed, then you’ll hit a gold mine – reviews of lots of books on that topic, with an indication of likely reader age.

Sometimes it just takes one wonderful book to turn a kid into a reader. Tap into what interests your child. Browse these book lists selected by Maria Salvadore, our children's literature expert. These books are for kids up to 9 years old, focus on new titles, and emphasize quality. Happy Reading!

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