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Children's and Young Adult Literature

Guide for library and Internet research resources about children's and young adult literature.

Article Databases

The following databases are excellent resources for find information about children's and young adult literature including their use in the classroom.

Children's Literature Comprehensive Database 
The database contains critical reviews of thousands of children's books, ranging from the earliest baby board books to novels and nonfiction for young adults.

Academic Search Ultimate (EBSCOhost) 
A multidisciplinary article database which covers thousands of mostly English-language popular magazines and scholarly (including peer-reviewed) journals. Includes topics in the social sciences, humanities, general science, education and most areas of academic study.

Education Full Text
Covers education topics such as critical thinking, teaching methods, curriculum, comparative education, literacy standards, multicultural education, psychology, special education, counseling, teacher/parent relations, vocational education, and others.

ERIC (via Proquest)
Premier U.S. database of education literature. Sponsored by the US Department of Education. Includes journal (EJ) and ERIC Document (ED) citations with abstracts; full text of ERIC Documents from 1993 to present.

JSTOR
A unique database which includes complete digitized backfiles of core scholarly journals, starting with the very first issues. Many of these journals date from the 1800s with over 4 million pages now available. JSTOR indexes hundreds of education and language & literature journals and provides image and full-text online access to  selected scholarly journals in the Humanities, Social Sciences and Sciences.

Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts
Indexes literature on the nature & use of language. Covers linguistics (nature & structure of human speech); language (speech sounds, sentence & word structure, meaning, spelling, phonetics); and speech, language, & hearing pathology.

Literature Online
Contains the full-text of selective creative works in all genres of literature, a database of critical articles, author biographies and reference works.

Literature Resource Center
Includes biographies, bibliographies & critical analysis of authors from every age & literary discipline. Covers novelists, poets, essayists, journalists &other writers. Includes full text of journals on literature and literary criticism.
 

MAS Ultra - School Edition
Designed specifically for high school libraries, this database contains full text for several hundred popular, high school magazines. It also provides full-text reference books and thousands of biographies, and primary source documents. Included is also an Image Collection of several hundred thousand photos, maps & flags, color PDFs and expanded full text back files for key magazines.


Primary Search
Provides full text for popular magazines for elementary school research. All full text articles included in the database are assigned a reading level indicator (Lexiles).  


Sage Premier
Includes the full text of peer-reviewed journals published by SAGE and participating societies. 

 

WorldCat
Find which libraries own a specific book. 

Journals

Some journals dedicated to the study of children's literature

Websites

Selected list of websites focusing on children's and young adult literature compiled by teachers and librarians.

Book Links
A quarterly supplement to Booklist, Book Links magazine is designed for teachers, youth librarians, school library media specialists, reading specialists, curriculum coordinators, and others interested in connecting children with high-quality literature-based resources. Book Links articles provide comprehensive information on using books in the classroom, including thematic bibliographies with related discussion questions and activities, author and illustrator interviews and essays, and articles by educators on practical ways to turn children onto reading.

Carol Hurst's Children's Literature Site
"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".

Children's Literature Web Guide
This site is a compilation of the "growing number of Internet resources related to Children and Young Adults." It includes discussion boards, links to authors, recommended books, resources for parents, teachers, etc. and more. A link to the Children's Books Awards is listed under "Quick Reference". About this link: "The most comprehensive guide to English-language children's book prizes on the Internet." (Site introduction)

Children's Picture Book Database
Miami University offers this search base of over 5,000 picture books:  "a place for designing literature-based thematic units for all subjects." 

Database of Award Winning Children's Literature
"The purpose of this database is to create a tailored reading list of quality children's literature or to find out if a book has won one of the indexed awards."

Discovering Children's Books (British Library) 
Collection devoted to historic children’s literature from medieval fables to contemporary picture books. Highlights include original manuscripts, artworks, poems, interviews, drafts and notebooks by renowned authors and illustrators. It brings together literature from four major cultural institutions: the British Library, Seven Stories—The National Centre for Children’s Books, the Bodleian Libraries, and the Victoria and Albert Museum. 

Literary Link: Young Adult Literature
This site is a index of many and varied online resources on young adult literature, from recommended books to themed reviews, to reading guides to discussion group topics, and so much more

On Lion for Kids
From the New York Public Library, this is a useful source for parents, teachers and students because it contains booklists, activities, children's literature articles, recommended reading, links to more sites, and much more. Click links across top of web page.

Reading Tub
Nonprofit organization that promotes reading. Includes a book review section.​