In the LREI library, we do our best to read everything we can get our hands on in order to advise our recommendations to your children. We can’t, however, read each of the 30,000 or so children’s titles that are published each year. So what do we do?
We get some help from our friends.
Children’s Literature blogs are invaluable to librarians in the name of reader’s advisory, finding out what’s new, and exploring the titles that we have some how missed. Here are some of the blogs that I use on a weekly basis to inform my own reading, and to keep up on the world of publishing.
Travis Jonker is an elementary school librarian who has been blogging since 2007. He reviews children’s books, reworks Newbery book covers, talks about happenings in the world of kidlit among other things. A useful tab can be found on the top of his blog and is entitled “Best New Books”. Simply click there for a round-up of the latest, greatest titles.
Jen is an engineer who just happens to love children’s literature. She has been blogging about kid’s books for years and she breaks down her reviews, not only by the year in which the book was published, but also by age range, and she also includes links to timely articles about children’s literature as a whole.
I like this blog because Ms. Yingling is a straight shooter. She will tell you in a quick and concise manner why a book works or why it doesn’t. She reads a ridiculous number of books, and she has her lens honed on searching for books that will appeal to boys.
Please take some time to check out these blogs. Nobody has time to read everything; we can all use a little help from our friends!