Children's Literature, Briefly

The preface of this title describes it as "a children's literature textbook for people who don't like children's literature textbooks" (p. v) which sets the tone for the rest of the text. Tunnell and Jacobs, both instructors of children's literature from Brigham Young University, offer an introduction to children's literature that is entertaining and educational. The book is divided into three parts: "The Magic of Books;" "The Books Themselves;" and "Books in the Classroom." The first section discusses the value of reading, why children don't read, how to distinguish between literary quality and personal taste, and how to recognize books that are well-written and well-illustrated. The second section tackles the history of children's literature as well as organization of children's books into nine separate genres: picture books, poetry, traditional fantasy, modern fantasy, contemporary realistic fiction, historical fiction, biography, informational books, and multicultural and international books. The third section describes controversial books and the most effective way to deal with challenges, how to motivate students to read, and teaching with children's books. The aim of the book is to provide "an overview to shed light on children's literature and its use with young readers" (p. v). Throughout the text, many examples of quality children's literature are used to illustrate particular points the authors want to make. All book references are included at the end of each chapter and each genre's chapter features a list of "books we like," compiled by the authors, which provides bibliographic information as well as a brief summary of the work. Included with the book is a children's literature database CD which contains a listing of 20,000 children's books which can be sorted by title, genre, grade level, topics, author, illustrator, year, or publisher. Instructions on how to use the CD-ROM are located in the back of the book at the end of the last chapter and they include color graphics to illustrate what the database's interface looks like as well as the tools used to sort books into categories. One of this book's greatest strengths is that it is written with humor, reads like a dialogue, and is organized in a logical way. The authors draw readers into the realm of children's literature with teasers excerpted from various titles, descriptions of interesting books, and providing interesting facts about children, their literature, and its history. Appended at the end of the book are "Guidelines for Building a Classroom Library;" book selection aids, a list of magazines for children, awards in children's literature, and information for anyone interested in publishing a children's book. The awards section and books selection section are particularly useful to anyone starting out in collection development (or those who have been doing it for a while) as well as those interested in finding award-winning books for children. While this text is not

I bought this book for Master's level class on Children's Literature, and it's a great book. It's easy to read, and jam-packed with useful information. This is a book I will keep & not sell back.

This was used as a textbook in my children's literature class and I'm glad it was! It really gets away from the conventional textbook by having the info relaying in an easy-going context.

The best way to study children's literature is to read actual children's books, not to study textbooks about them! The authors of this text are among the few that recognize this truth. Consequently the chapters are purposefully (and generally) short and to the point. Each chapter includes authors' recommendations as well as qualities to avoid in each genre. Appendices are informative (see the information about Awards for children's and young adult lit). The 4th edition (2007) is even better: the CD database includes over *20,000* children's book titles that you can search (by title, author, genre, format etc), build lists, and customize information for your own purposes. (One small annoyance within the database is the lack of a "back" button - hopefully future editions will improve on this.) In my 14+ years of college textbook studying, this is one of the better texts to hold my interest and give me information I needed. It is well-written, well-designed, and very helpful. I'll use this (and the database) as a resource on a regular basis in my work with young children and their reading.

The over 10,000 title database on the CD included with this book is alone well worth the price of the text. It is a welcome time saving tool for busy teachers. Not only can you perform searches to find books to match different topics, you can organize and enter information about your existing library, whether or not all of your titles are included in the database. You can add your own comments to the information stored for each title.The book covers the different genres chapter by chapter. At the end of each chapter, the authors have compiled a very useful bibliography, including their ten favorite books in each genre. I'm glad I found this book--it's one I'll use for years to come. It won't be gathering dust on the shelf as some of my professional books have.