Rebecca L. Thomas

This long-standing selection tool for picture books is a key source of subject analysis of the current crop of publishing for children. In recent years, book jobbers have created online ordering systems that gather reviews and search terms that are used in collection development. This standard tool still has value and is probably most appropriate at the district level where it can be shared by a number of teacher librarians. For this reviewer, the major purpose of subject access is to develop collections using collection mapping, where emphasis collections are built to support common curricular topics in each school. It is not just about the holiday collection or a collection of award winners. It is about topics such as community helpers, seasons, animal studies, environment studies, and other topics where a plethora of materials would support a child’s investigation and curiosity as encouraged by learning activities cotaught in the library learning commons. Another use of this resource is for those doing gentrification of the collection in order to serve student interest and the curriculum in ways that just an alphabetical by author easy collection cannot support. You probably already know if this resource is of value in your school or district. Perhaps it is time to dust it off and make it work harder in building useable collections that serve every child’s needs and interests.… (altro)

You’ve got to be kidding! Over 1,000 pages listing series books for children? This book provides the evidence for what publishers obviously know about series books. Kids love them. And, if you are a teacher librarian worth your salt, of course you are going to have complete sets of all of them…well, that is what they expect and you know it. Isn’t it easy to track down this stuff on the Internet? Publishers catalogs? Folksonomies? Well, convenience in a five-pound book does seem attractive. We think, however, the teacher librarians horde such a work rather than put it on a dictionary stand for kids to use, we mean, series aficionados to use. So, with is annotations of the series as a whole and the ordered listing by number and year, and all the indexing, here is more about , or perhaps a never up-to-date list to stock, promote, and most importantly buy from. Can’t you just see those begging eyes wanting the next one just like the one they just finished? Give in. There are worse things thank the series-addicted life.… (altro)