Library Guides: Children's Literature Research Guide: Home

About the Children's Literature Collection

The UC Berkeley Library houses a very selective collection of children's literature shelved in the Main Stacks, the Morrison Library and the Northern Regional Library Facility (NRLF). There are also many non-English language children's books held in other campus libraries such as the East Asian Library. The Berkeley Library's collection specializes in literature for school-aged children, books supporting multicultural education and, over the years, has acquired many award-winning books.

Use the UC Berkeley online catalog, UC Library Search, to find children's books in the collection:

Identify books by title (where the wild things are) or author (myers, walter dean)
Search subject: juvenile literature (jazz juvenile fiction)
Browse: keyword: children's literature collection
Browse: keyword: jack graves early reader collection (to locate the special collection of early readers and primers donated by Berkeley alum Jack Graves)

Literary Criticism

For academic criticism of children's literature or literature in general, consult the following resources:

MLA International Bibliography This link opens in a new window
Sponsored by the Modern Language Association.
Academic Search Complete This link opens in a new window
Articles from broad array of peer-reviewed journals, popular and trade magazines and news sources for nearly all areas of study; available in English, Spanish, German, French, Italian and Portuguese.
Essay and General Literature Index Retrospective This link opens in a new window
Literature Criticism Online This link opens in a new window
Contains thousands of essays from the Gale literary criticism books.
Literature Resource Center (LRC) This link opens in a new window
Provides access to content of numerous print counterparts including Contemporary Authors, Contemporary Literary Criticism Select, and Dictionary of Literary Biography.
Project MUSE This link opens in a new window
Topics include literature and criticism, history, the visual and performing arts, cultural studies, education, political science, gender studies, economics and many others. Books are available in PDF format, searchable and retrievable to the chapter level, with no restrictions on downloading or printing.

The Library subscribes to hundreds of databases. Consult the A-Z Databases list to see them. Search for or browse online resources by subject (broad academic disciplines) or by database type (article databases, book and film reviews, statistics and numeric data, etc.)

Children's Book Awards

Caldecott Medal
For distinguished American picture book for children.
Coretta Scot King Book Award
Awarded annually for outstanding African American authors and illustrators of books for children and young adults that demonstrate an appreciation of African American culture and universal human values."
Horn Book Award
Sponsored by the Boston Globe
Newbery Medal
For distinguished contribution to American literature for children.
Printz Award
For books that exemplifiy "literary excellence in young adult literature."
Database of Award-Winning Children's Literature (DAWCL)
Compiled and indexed by children's librarian Lisa Bartle.

Book Reviews

Children's Literature Comprehensive Database (CLCD) This link opens in a new window
Reviews of children's books.
An acquisition, research, and reference service that offers more than 1,800,000 MARC records and more than 315,000 reviews of children's books.
Teachers College Record Book Reviews This link opens in a new window
Reviews of the leading books in education and educational research by major scholars in these fields. (TCR Book Reviews)
Book Review Digest Plus This link opens in a new window
"Indexes book reviews of English-language fiction and nonfiction books for children and adults, from over 8000 leading magazines from the United States, Canada, and Great Britain. Includes several thousand full text reviews. For book reviews published from 1905 to 1982 go to Book Review Digest Retrospective which can be searched separately or simultaneously."

Web resources

Baldwin Library of Historical Children's Literature: Digital Collection
The Baldwin Library of Historical Children’s Literature in the Department of Special Collections at the University of Florida's George A. Smathers Libraries contains more than 130,000 books and periodicals published in the United States and Great Britain from the mid-1600s to present day. Noteworthy items include Robinson Crusoe, Pilgrim’s Progress, Aesop’s Fables, and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
Center for Children's Books
From the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Children's Book Council (CBC)
Trade association of children's book publishers
Children's Literature Association
Association of scholars, critics, professors, students, librarians, teachers and institutions.
Children's Notable Lists
Notable children's books, recordings, and videos identified by Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC)
Children's Picture Book Database (CPBD)
From Miami University
Cooperative Children's Book Center (CCBC)
From the School of Ed, University of Wisconsin-Madison
International Children's Digital Library
The ICDL collection includes digitized scans of 4619 children's books in 59 languages. The majority of the collection consists of contemporary materials that are in copyright. The remainder of the collection is made up of important historical materials that are in the public domain.
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The ICDL collection has two primary audiences. The first audience is children ages 3-13, as well as librarians, teachers, parents, and caregivers who work with children of these ages. The second audience is international scholars and researchers in the area of children's literature.

The ICDL was created by an interdisciplinary research team at the University of Maryland in cooperation with the Internet Archive. Funded primarily by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS), and Microsoft Research
Publisher's Weekly (Children's Books)
Trade magazine for publishing industry.

Other collections

In addition to the collection at UC Berkeley most public libraries have rich and extensive children's book collections managed by knowledgeable and experienced children's librarians.