It is important to note that this volume is the 9th edition of a series of tomes that have strong information about picture book subject matter. First created in the early 1980s, this volume has regularly been updated to include timely and important subject access to information that will help teacher librarians' work with early childhood education in the love of reading/books. This particular edition includes both non fiction and fiction again, but in different formats that can be accommodated by libraries everywhere. This is not to be read cover to cover, but used as a strong index to information that helps with both reader's advisory and illustrator's work. It contains information that is strong but friendly, comprehensive but specific. If you are new to the field, experienced in the field, working toward being expert in the field of children's literature, this ready reference tome is for you.

An extremely helpful source with long lists of picture books on nearly every topic. If you need something on cats, or sharks, or Halloween, or feeling sad, you can find scads of suggestions. Besides the subject listing, works are also organized by author, so if a reader enjoys one book there's a ready-made list of others. I did run into one problem; I was trying to find some LGBTQ-related picture books and couldn't find anything under that heading or any other I could think of. (I eventually stumbled across a few under "homosexuality" by sheer chance--that's not exactly the term in common parlance, not to mention it's missing three out of five letters...) Most resources on the topic are pretty new, so this is probably something that will be corrected in future editions. ( )

I'm sure this book is exceedingly useful for someone with a different job than mine who has immediate access to more books in any given category and a larger audience to share these books with. As it is, I think the Internet has changed searching enough that I'm more likely to find what I want online.

This great friend of children’s librarians and classroom teachers has been thoroughly revised for this new edition. It is the most comprehensive index to the topical contents of pictures books for children and is an essential tool for selecting current title by topic from a sea of picture books. School and public libraries need the new tools as an extended index to part of their current collection and a great source for selection. We wish that this work could be a fee library collection that would have both a retrospective library and a current collection library that one could search and even help add to – something that could be kept up to date by the authors and a group of trusted contributors. It is time for this and many other valuable tools to hit the digital wave that is making the entire printed reference collection obsolete. Until that day comes, a copy of this on your reference shelf needs to earn its place by being publicized to users of the picture book collection.

The authors note that the audience for picture books has now expanded to include, among other groups, adults who are learning to read. There is an excellent “How to Use This Book” section and a nice introduction about the genesis of English language picture books including a lengthy bibliography for further reading. The book is organized by subject, bibliography (which provides descriptive data) and title. The authors chose to include out-of-print titles “because school and public collection are largely retrospective,” and because it is now relatively easy to purchase out-of-print materials. ( )