Juvenile Collection Categories

In Randall Library, the literature for children and young adults is shelved by these categories

E Easy (Picture) books: Arranged alphabetically by author's last name.  
B Biography: Arranged by the last name of the person the book is about. 
Fic Juvenile Fiction: Arranged alphabetically by author's last name.  
J Non-fiction: Arranged by Dewey Decimal Classification
The 800 class in Dewey is for literature. The major type of literature you will find in our Dewey collection is poetry. American poetry has a call number beginning with 811. English poetry is in 821. Folk tales are in the 300 class (and we have a lot of these books). For more information, see our basic outline of the Dewey Decimal Classification System.

SELECTED REFERENCE WORKS:

Bibliographies and Subject Guides of Children's Literature

Children's Catalog. Reference Z1037 .W76
The most comprehensive annotated bibliography of children's literature for Pre-K through Grade 6. Also includes a section of recommended web sites. Indexed by author, illustrator, title, subject and other distinctive characteristics such as audiobooks, publishers' series and Caldecott medal winners.

A to Zoo: Subject Access to Children's Picture Books. Reference Z1037 .L715 2006
The 7th edition lists more than 28,000 titles under 1,350 subjects. If you don't find your subject, be sure to consult the subject heading guide. Also includes an illustrator index.

Characters in Children's Literature. Reference PN1009 .A1 J78 1997
"Offers critical introductions to more than 1700 characters from 230 works of fiction." [p. vii.]

Picture Books for Children. Reference Z1037 .A1 C565 1997
Annotations are arranged by these categories: "Me and My Family," "Other People," "The World I Live In," and "The Imaginative World." An introductory essay describes trends in picture book publishing.

Adventuring with Books: A Booklist for Pre-K-Grade 6. Reference Z1037 .N346 2002
Kaleidoscope : A Multicultural Booklist for Grades K-8. Reference Z1037 .A1 K346 2003
Your Reading: An Annotated Booklist for Middle School and Junior High. Reference Z1037 .Y68 2003
Books for You : An Annotated Booklist for Senior High. Reference Z1037 .B724 2001
This series of bibliographies produced by the National Council of Teachers of English lists new titles that "all have one thing in common: they're good books that students and teachers alike enjoy." [Your Reading, p. vii.]

Author Information

Something about the Author Reference PN451 .S6 (171 volumes)
Something about the Author: Autobiography Series Reference PN451 .S65 (26 volumes)
Yesterday's Authors of Books for Children Reference PN451 .Y4 (2 volumes)
SATA provides an overview of children's authors personal lives, writings, "sidelights," and biographical/critical sources. The autobiographical companion set provides first person narratives by the authors. Yesterday's Authors includes profiles of authors who died prior to 1961. These volumes are indexed in the Gale Literary Index.

Black Authors and Illustrators of Books for Children and Young Adults, 3d ed. Reference PN1009 .A1 M87 1999
Twentieth Century Children's Writers, 4th ed. Reference PN1009 .A1 T9 1995

Plot Summaries

Masterplots II: Juvenile and Young Adult Fiction Reference Z1037 .A1 M377 1991
Plot summaries, themes and meanings and context (comparison to other works) are provided for about 500 major works.

Primaryplots: A Book Talk Guide for Use with Readers Ages 4-8. Reference Z1037 .A1 T47 1989
Provides plot summary, thematic material, book talk material and activities, and related titles.

Reviews and Criticism Sources

Children's Book Review Index. Index Z1037 .A1 C575
Indexes reviews of children's books from 1964 to date.

Children's Literature: A Guide to Criticism. Reference PN1009 .A1 H46 1987
Pulls together criticism from articles, books, and dissertations from "disparate disciplines."

Children's Literature Review. Reference Z1037 .A1 C5
Contains excerpts of critical information about children's books from books and periodicals. Three levels of commentary are provided: Author (biographical overview followed by comments from the author), General (about the author's entire body of work) and Title (criticism of a specific work.)

SEARCHING THE LIBRARY CATALOG FOR  LITERARY RESOURCES

Searching for Authors
If you are looking for resources written or edited by a particular person, you will do an author search in the library catalog.  Author searches should be done last name, first name.  If resources are available by two different authors who happen to have the same name, look for clues to determine the appropriate author.  If you cannot determine the appropriate author by titles of works, birth and death dates are usually given for clarification.

If you are looking for books about a particular person, you will do a subject search in the library catalog.  Subject searches for information about people should also be conducted last name, first name.  Resources about authors are often broken down into particular categories using Library of Congress subject headings.  

Some Common Subject Headings Associated with Resources About Authors

Searching for Topics
There are two ways to search for literary topics in the library catalog, subject and keyword searches. Subject searches look in the Library of Congress subject headings, which have a consistent way of describing the information in library materials, leading you to very specific sources.  Subject searches will also clear up any confusion when searching for a word that is a homonym (for example depression).   However, occasionally you may miss some very relevant resources by only doing a subject search.

Some Common Subject Headings Relating to Children's Literature

Keyword searches look for the words you enter in every part of the records in the library catalog.  Keyword searches are very flexible, but may result in "false drops" or resources that have all the words you have searched for, but are not actually on the topic you were searching.  There are a few techniques to help you create better keyword searches.

AND  When AND is placed between keywords, it searches for all the words, but the words need not be near each other and the relationship between the words is not necessarily important
EXAMPLE:  Milne and criticism

OR  Using OR allows you to search for similar words in one search
EXAMPLE:  Monsters and (children's or juvenile)

Truncation  Using a wildcard symbol (*) allows you to search for a root word with all of its possible endings
EXAMPLE:  Monster* and (children's or juvenile)

FINDING JOURNAL ARTICLES

Types of journals/magazines dealing with children’s and adolescent literature:
    * Academic journals that focus on scholarly study (see below)
    * Review journals that review individual books for children and young adults (Hornbook)
    * Library science/education journals that discuss how to select and/or use books in a library or classroom setting (Journal of Youth Services in Libraries, Book Links)
    * Children's magazines, intended for children’s reading pleasure (Cricket, Stone Soup)

Academic Journals: Please note that many of these journals include non-peer-reviewed articles, reviews, and interviews. Examine them carefully if you are looking for scholarly sources.
   
    * ALAN Review (Adolescent Literature. Indexed in ERIC)
    * Bookbird: A Journal of International Children's Literature (Indexed in ERIC, MLA, LISA and LISTA)
    * Canadian Children's Literature (Indexed in MLA. Order articles through ILL)
    * Children's Literature (Indexed in MLA)
    * Children’s Literature in Education (Indexed in EbscoHost Academic Search Premier and ERIC)
    * Children's Literature Association Quarterly (Indexed in MLA)
    * The Lion and the Unicorn (Indexed in EbscoHost Academic Search Premier and ERIC)
    * The Looking Glass (Free Online Journal)
    * Signal (Ceased in 2003)

SEARCHING INDEXES AND DATABASES

To find articles on specific subjects relating to children's literature, try searching one of the following databases. They are available from the library's database page.

EBSCOhost
Try clicking on any combination of the below databases published by EBSCOhost to search for journal and magazine articles:

• Academic Search Premier
• MasterFILE Premier
• Art Abstracts
• Communication & Mass Media Complete
• ERIC
• Humanities International Index
• Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts
• MLA International Bibliography
• PsycARTICLES
• PsycINFO

MLA International Bibliography  
The MLA International Bibliography, produced by the Modern Language Association of America, consists of bibliographic records pertaining to literature, language, linguistics, and folklore and includes coverage from 1926 to the present. The MLA International Bibliography provides access to scholarly research in nearly 4,000 journals and series. It also covers relevant monographs, working papers, proceedings, bibliographies, and other formats.

The MLA Thesaurus and Index
The thesaurus is a guide to suggest preferred terms, related terms, and synonyms for many descriptors. A plus sign (+) in front of a narrower term means that it also has narrower terms.
The index contains an alphabetical list of terms used to index the database. It excludes terms that appear in the limit fields as well as terms in the field-specific indexes. The index allows you to look up, select, and search for variations of a term. It is particularly useful if you are uncertain of the spelling of a term or how the terms appear in the database. Since the index shows terms used in indexing the database, searching directly from this index will always yield results.

ERIC  
ERIC, the U.S. Department of Educations Educational Resource Information Center database, contains citations and abstracts from over 980 educational and education-related journals. This database also contains full text of more than 2,200 digests along with references for additional information.

EJ  ERIC JOURNAL  Notes that this document was published in a journal
ED  ERIC DOCUMENT Notes that this document was never published in a journal, but may be proceedings from a conference, curriculum materials, etc.  These documents can be located on microfilm in Randall Library or from 1996-the present in the ERIC Documents Reproduction Center.

JSTOR
Archival collection of over 60 scholarly journals in language and literature. 

Gale Literary Index
Gale's Literary Index is a master index to the major literature series published by Gale Group, Inc. It combines and cross references more than 130,000 author names, including pseudonyms and variant names, and more than 160,000 titles into one source.

Gale Literature Resource Center
Full text access to a lot of the Gale products, like Contemporary Literary Criticism.

Library and Information Science Abstracts
Indexes over 450 journal in library and information science since 1969. Includes thousands of articles on children's books and publishing.

LISTA
Library/Information Sciences & Technology Abstracts (LISTA) indexes more than 600 periodicals plus books, research reports, and proceedings in the information industry.

Novelist
The strength of this database is that it helps you find books similar to books you like. In the advanced search mode, you can specify reading level, lexile score of readability, number of pages, publication date, etc.

Project MUSE
A full-text scholarly archive -- good coverage of children's literature topics.