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Selecting Children's Literaturefor Academic LibrariansMark T. Bay aa University of Houston , Houston, TX, 77204-2091,USAPublished online: 11 Oct 2008.

To cite this article: Mark T. Bay (2001) Selecting Children's Literature for AcademicLibrarians, Behavioral & Social Sciences Librarian, 19:2, 1-6, DOI: 10.1300/J103v19n02_01

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1300/J103v19n02_01

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Selecting Children’s Literaturefor Academic Librarians:Tips from the Trenches

Mark T. Bay

ABSTRACT. Due to tracking into specific areas of librarianship, mostrecent graduates of library degree programs are unfamiliar with areasnot their own. Academic librarians, for example, often do not takeclasses in children’s literature. However, academic librarians support-ing education programs are often called on to develop and managechildren’s literature collections. This article provides suggestions from aneducation librarian who had to learn about children’s literature on the job.[Article copies available for a fee from The Haworth Document Delivery Service:1-800-342-9678. E-mail address: <getinfo@haworthpressinc.com> Website:<http://www.HaworthPress.com> � 2001 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rightsreserved.]

KEYWORDS. Academic librarians, children’s literature, collectiondevelopment

Most schools and departments offering an accredited degree inlibrarianship divide students into specific tracks early in the program.Students are faced with a wide variety of courses, and as a means offinishing the degree in a reasonable amount of time usually mustchoose whether to work towards being a public librarian, academiclibrarian, school media specialist, ‘‘special’’ or corporate librarian, ormore increasingly, information technology specialist. While it is pos-sible to take a few classes here and there in other areas, library and

Mark T. Bay is Education/Social Sciences Reference Librarian, M. D. AndersonLibrarian, University of Houston, Houston, TX 77204-2091 (E-mail: mbay@uh.edu).

Behavioral & Social Sciences Librarian, Vol. 19(2) 2001� 2001 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved. 1

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information science students usually have to pick an area and focus onit. As a result, new librarians often do not have a great deal of experi-ence with tasks outside of their chosen tracks. For example, librariansat institutions with schools or colleges of education are frequentlycharged with maintaining and developing collections of children’sliterature. New library school graduates from an academic track gener-ally have very little experience with this, since children’s literaturecourses are usually taught in school or public library tracks.

The purpose of this article is to pass on the benefit of experience. Asa typical academic reference track library student, I was unprepared todevelop and maintain the library’s collection of juvenile materials. Iwas comfortable with collection development in general, especially inmy assigned subject areas. However, I had no idea where to begin tofind information about juvenile literature. The following is an identifi-cation and discussion of sources of information about children’s litera-ture in general and my library’s juvenile collection in particular.

Education Faculty: If one is called on to support a juvenile litera-ture collection in an academic library, it follows that there is probablya college, school, or department of education at the institution. Fur-ther, there are likely faculty members who teach about juvenile litera-ture or have a research interest in it. Probably the most important steptowards effective management of such a collection is identifying thesefaculty members and speaking with them at the earliest opportunity.Not only do these people know a great deal about the art and scienceof selecting books for children, but they are also probably very famil-iar with the strengths and weaknesses of the collection. They can tellthe librarian what needs to be weeded and what needs updating. Theycan also direct the librarian towards selection tools that facilitate thedevelopment of the collection. These faculty may also assist in teach-ing the librarian more about children’s literature, or at least suggestsome textbooks or other resources on the topic. My faculty contactdirected me towards Children’s Literature in the Elementary School(Huck, Hepler, and Hickman 1993), which is an important textbook inthe field of children’s literature and provides a good grounding in thetheory and practice of selecting such material.

As a bonus of this faculty contact, it is possible to expand thelibrary’s juvenile collection. My faculty contact is a well-known ex-pert on children’s literature, and reviews dozens of titles every year.Through my interactions with him I have been able to establish a

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Mark T. Bay 3

relationship where the library receives any of the books he does notwant for his personal collection. In this manner I have been able to addsignificantly to the size and quality of my library’s juvenile collection.While this is not possible in all libraries, it is a worthwhile avenue toexplore.

Professional Elementary School Teachers: Elementary schoolteachers are involved with children’s literature almost daily. They aretrained to understand child development, to develop or support curric-ula, and to evaluate and utilize children’s literature. They generallyreceive catalogs of children’s literature, and often have strong opin-ions of a particular book’s value in the classroom. Teacher advice is agreat counterpart to faculty advice; teachers are more likely to beaware of the ‘‘real world’’ implications of using certain works in theclassroom. In addition, teachers quite often talk with each other aboutbooks, so querying one elementary teacher often leads to gathering theopinions and suggestions of several teachers at once. While speakingto elementary teachers may not be possible for all new educationlibrarians in academic libraries, all should attempt to do so. The pay-offs will undoubtedly be worth the effort.

Reference Books: While there are dozens of books available to aidin the selection of children’s literature, speaking with faculty andteachers leads one to three of the most popular among professionals.Best Books for Children Preschool Through Grade 6 (Gillespie andNaden 1998) is perhaps the most useful. Now in its sixth edition, thisreference source groups juvenile literature by subject and age group.An index is provided to aid the searcher in rapidly finding a child’sbook on just about any subject and for many reading levels. This bookis invaluable for locating appropriate books when patrons requestmore material on particular subjects. The authors have also writtensimilar books for different grade levels, but these are generally not ascurrent.

The New York Times’ Guide to the Best Books for Children (Lipson1999) is another valuable selection tool. This book can serve as acollection development ‘‘checklist.’’ While most budgets would notallow the purchase of all the books listed, buying books from thisresource will ensure that what is being added meets fairly demandingstandards and is most likely a valuable addition to the juvenile collec-tion.

Children’s Literature Awards and Winners: A Directory of Prizes,

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Authors, and Illustrators (Jones 1994) is another valuable resource.There are hundreds of different awards presented periodically forchildren’s literature, and Jones has compiled most of them. Includedare descriptions of the awards and chronological lists of the winners.There is also an alphabetical list of authors and illustrators with thetitles of their works and the awards these works earned. While buyingfrom all the awards lists would be impossible, selecting the majorawards (e.g., the Newbery Medal for authors, the Caldecott Medal forillustrators) plus awards with regional significance (e.g., CaliforniaYoung Reader Medal or the Reading Association of Ireland Children’sBook Award) is a sound policy. Unfortunately, the most recent editionof Jones’ book was published in 1994. More recent winners can befound on the awarding organization’s web sites (for example, theAmerican Library Association’s division Association for Library Ser-vice to Children, <http://www.ala.org/alsc/>, provides up-to-date ac-cess to lists of Caldecott and Newbery winners and runners-up).

Periodicals: Professional library journals are excellent sources ofinformation about children’s literature. Publishers’ Weekly regularlypublishes reviews of new and forthcoming children’s books. LibraryJournal and American Libraries occasionally run features about chil-dren’s literature and reviews of books. However, the most useful jour-nal for selecting juvenile material is School Library Journal. Through-out the year, SLJ publishes reviews of books and lists of good booksby age and interest. In the December issue every year, SLJ publishes alist of the best children’s books of the year. This list is selected by apanel of experts in children’s literature, and encompasses the best inchildren’s publishing, fiction and non-fiction. The most recent exam-ple (Jones, Toth, and Grabarek 1999) lists over 50 books reviewed bySLJ deemed as best of the year. They are spread across genre, agegroup, and subject area. Acquiring a few years of these lists andpurchasing all or most of the books on them is an excellent way ofdeveloping a juvenile collection.

The Internet: As in almost every other area of human endeavor, theInternet, particularly the World Wide Web, is a useful tool for select-ing children’s books. Hundreds of school and public librarians andelementary school teachers have posted lists of their favorite chil-dren’s books. Several organizations have followed suit. Using a Websearch engine such as Yahoo! (http://www.yahoo.com) or Lycos(www.lycos.com) will generally yield a large number of sites devoted

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Mark T. Bay 5

to children’s books. However, not all are of the same quality; anyonecan post anything to the Web, so make sure to check the authority ofthe author. A teachers’ organization or library children’s departmentwill have more valid information, by and large, than an individual withno professional credentials. A good example of a useful list found onthe Web is 100 Picture Books Everyone Should Know (NYPL BranchLibraries Office of Children’s Services 1998), compiled by children’slibrarians of the New York Public Library Branch Libraries. Manyother public libraries have posted similar lists.

Other Web sources of information about children’s books includeonline booksellers like Amazon (http://www.amazon.com) or Barnesand Noble (http://www.bn.com). These sites are designed to encour-age sales of books to users, but there is no reason that they cannot beused as information sources and books be ordered through normalchannels. Sites such as these provide information on best-selling booksas well as include synopses and reviews from professional literature andnewspapers, along with customer reviews. While not the best sources ofinformation for selecting children’s literature, they provide supportingreviews, price information, and often pictures of book covers.

There are undoubtedly more sources of information useful for de-velopers of children’s collections. Public librarians in children’s de-partments and school media specialists are definitely experts in work-ing with children’s books, and would be able to suggest even moresources than listed here. However, academic librarians who work withchildren’s literature collections generally have other responsibilities inaddition to the collection, and probably do not have the time to be-come experts in juvenile collection development. Hopefully this listwill help newer academic librarians responsible for their institutions’children’s collections make up somewhat for the lack of training andexperience provided in most library/information science degree pro-grams. Although it can be daunting at first, with a little time and a littleassistance, most people in this situation will come to enjoy buyingchildren’s books, as well as gain even more respect for their col-leagues in public and school libraries.

Received: 03/21/00Accepted: 04/20/00

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REFERENCES

Gillespie, John T., and Corinne J. Naden. Best Books for Children: PreschoolThrough Grade 6 (6th Edition). New Providence, RI: R.R. Bowker, 1998.

Huck, Charlotte S., Susan Hepler, and Janet Hickman. Children’s Literature in theElementary School (Fifth Edition). Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace Jovonovich Col-lege Publishers, 1993.

Jones, Delores Blythe. Children’s Literature Awards and Winners: A Directory ofPrizes, Authors, and Illustrators (3rd Edition). Detroit, MI: Neal-Schuman Pub-lishers, 1994.

Jones, Trevelyn E., Luann Toth, and Daryl Grabarek. ‘‘Best Books 99: Books Re-viewed in SLJ in 1999.’’ School Library Journal 45, no. 12 (Dec. 1999): 38-45.

Lipson, Eden Rose. The New York Times’ Guide to the Best Books for Children. NewYork: Times Books, 1999.

New York Public Library Branch Libraries Office of Children’s Services. 100 PictureBooks Everyone Should Know [online]. Available at http://www.nypl.org/branch/kids/gloria.html [1998, November 21–last update].

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