Essential Resources and Other Sources: Childrens

The Children's Department at the State Library Resource Center serves children from birth to age 12 and includes materials on all non-fiction and fiction topics.

Essential Resources

World Book Encyclopedia: a must have for any reference desk, especially children’s where there is strong need for quick access info.

Basic dictionary (copies on reference and circulation): The Macmillan Dictionary for Children is a wonderful choice for children’s desks.

Grangers Index to Poetry (also available online) is great for those “I remember the first line of a poem…” moments.

A to Zoo: Subject Access to Children’s Picture Books is an amazing resource for non-children’s staff that may have a patron who needs picture books on a particular topic.

Best Books for Children: Preschool Through Grade 6 is a resource that is indexed thematically, but goes all the way through grade 6; useful for those students who need to read a themed book but don’t know where to start.

African American Biography is heavily used during February and throughout the year for famous/important African Americans.

New Book of Popular Science comes in handy when a young person (grades 5 and up) comes in and needs quick information on a specific science subject.

Other Sources

Something About the Author is often used when teachers or high school students do author study projects.

Children’s Literature Review is used when students (or professionals) are asked to find literary criticisms of major work of children’s literature.

Storyteller’s Sourcebook: A Subject, Title, and Motif Index to Folklore Collections for Children is an amazing tool for storytellers who need ideas or are trying to find different versions of stories to tell.

Using Picture Storybooks to Teach Literary Devices is a great tool for teachers who want a different perspective on teaching metaphors, foreshadowing, etc.

Characters in Children’s Literature “contains critical introductions to over 1700 characters from 230 works of children's literature from Canada, Great Britain, the United States, and Australia.”