Online Children's Literature Journals

ALAN: The Assembly of Literature for Adolescents
The Assembly on Literature for Adolescents is one of the NCTE's special-interest groups. Founded in November 1973, ALAN is made up of teachers, authors, librarians, publishers, teacher-educators and their students, and others who are particularly interested in the area of young adult literature. ALAN, and also publishes The ALAN Review, which contains articles on Young Adult (YA) literature and its teaching, interviews with authors, reports on publishing trends, current research on YA literature, and reviews of new books.

Book Links
An online magazine designed for teachers, librarians, library media specialists, booksellers, parents, and other adults interested in connecting children with high-quality books. Book Links provides comprehensive information for using books in the classroom, including thematic bibliographies with related discussion questions and activities, author and illustrator interviews and essays, and articles by educators on practical ways to turn children onto reading. Reviews are from quality children's journals such as Horn Book, Library School Journal, Book Links, and Kirkus. Each issue of Book Links focuses on a core curriculum area, including science, social studies, language arts, history, geography, and multicultural literature. On this site you will find highlights of the current issue, a searchable index, information about subscribing, and submissions guidelines.

The Children's Corner of The Boston Book Review
The Children's Corner of The Boston Book Review seeks out and promotes the highest achievements in contemporary writing. Bringing readers into the ongoing project of literary life, the BBR features independent comment from preeminent writers, scholars and intellectuals on today's most important children's books.  Together with fiction, poetry, interviews, and essays, provocative reviews assess works in a wide variety of topics. The BBR provides high quality book reviews.

The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books
One of the nation's leading children's book review journals for school and public librarians, this Bulletin is devoted entirely to the review of current books for children. For each book, provides concise summaries and critical evaluations; information on content, reading level, strengths and weaknesses, and quality of format; and suggestions for curricular use.

The Horn Book Guide Online
Instant access to more than 35,000 reviews can be found at The Horn Book Guide Online. All the reviews are searchable by author, illustrator, title, subject, bibliographic information, as well as by rating. This site is available by subscription.

The Lion and the Unicorn
A theme- and genre-centered journal of international scope committed to serious, ongoing discussions of children's literature.

The Looking Glass
An electronic journal about children's literature that combines an interest in the traditional with an eye for the modern. Includes scholarly articles of interest to both specialists and nonspecialists.

School Library Journal Online
Provides librarians who work with young people in school and public libraries with indispensable information needed to manage libraries—from creating high-quality collections to understanding how technology can assist (or hinder) learning.

Carol Hurst's Children's Literature Site
This comprehensive Web site provides information on featured and reviewed children's literature, curriculum and thematic topics, and professional resources, including a free online newsletter. This is a collection of reviews of great books for kids, ideas of ways to use them in the classroom and collections of books and activities about particular subjects, curriculum areas, themes and professional topics.

Electronic Products and Resources: Web Sites on Children's Literature

Andy Holt's Virtual Library KIDStack
This page targets Collections of Children's Literature. Collections are divided into "English", "French" and "Spanish" sections.

Children's Book Council
The Children's Book Council (CBC) is a nonprofit trade organization. Its members are United States publishers and packagers of children's and young adult trade books. The CBC "is dedicated to encouraging literacy and the use and enjoyment of children's books." Check out the CBC Showcase, which features a thematic bibliography of books published by members. There is a new list featured every other month. Each bibliography features over forty poetry books for children, with a link to cover art and a detailed summary for each book. The Showcase Archives contains about 30 bibliographies. The topics include multicultural books, nature and science, folk and fairy tales, historical fiction, and biographies. Other topics include holidays, mysteries, and the African-American experience.

Database of Award-Winning Children's Literature
Search this database to create a tailored reading list of quality children's literature, or to find out if a book has won one of the indexed awards. Designed primarily for use by librarians or teachers intervening for a child-reader, but can be used by anyone to find the best in children's literature including parents, bookstore personnel, and children and young adults themselves. DAWCL has over 4,000 records from 50 awards across five English-speaking countries (United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom).

Barahona Center for the Study of Books in Spanish for Children and Adolescents
The Barahona Center at California State University, San Marcos, provides information about recommended books in Spanish for children and adolescents. More than six thousand books are in the center's database, selected because of their quality of art and writing, presentation of material, and appeal to the intended audience.

Children's Literature: Beyond Basals
This site provides hundreds of in-depth guides for using children's literature in K–12 classrooms, curriculum ideas, picture books for older and reluctant readers, and links to other Web sources on children's literature.

Children's Literature Web Guide
This site is a wonderful resource on authors and stories on the Web; readers' theater; resources for teachers, parents, storytellers, writers, and illustrators; book awards; recommended book lists; journals; reviews; indexes; research on children's books; and much more. It gathers together and categorizes the growing number of Internet resources related to books for Children and Young Adults. Much of the information that you can find through these pages is provided by fans, schools, libraries, and commercial enterprises involved in the book world.

Jim Trelease on Reading
This site offers a complete guide to Jim Trelease's work and is aimed at parents, teachers, librarians, and college students—anyone interested in children's reading and education. Stresses the importance of reading aloud to children of all ages.

Kathy Schrock's Guide for Educators: Literature and Language Arts
This comprehensive site lists numerous Web sites on children's literature, including poetry, fables and multicultural stories, lesson plans, writing and grammar, and much more.

Kay E. Vandergrift's Special Interest Page
Created by Dr. Kay E. Vandergrift of Rutgers University, this comprehensive Web site on children's literature is an outstanding resource for educators of all levels. The site consists of information on gender and culture in picture books, young adult literature, research, literature and technology, the history of children's literature, censorship, intellectual freedom and the Internet, and copyright laws and the World Wide Web.

Once Upon a Time
This site, created by Dr. Mary Ellen Van Camp of Ball State University, contains many resources on children's literature. Includes information on professional associations, children's literature around the world, children's literature awards, poetry, authors and illustrators, and professional resources, plus much more.

Random House's Teachers' Resource Center
This site, sponsored by Random House, has teacher's guides on books for reluctant readers, thematic instruction, authors and illustrators, books by grade level, and Newbery Award winners.

The Center for Children's Books
The Center for Children's Books (CCB) houses a non-circulating collection of more than 14,000 recent and historically significant trade books for youth, birth through high school, plus review copies of nearly all trade books published in the U.S. in the current year. There are over 1,000 professional and reference books on the history and criticism of literature for youth, literature-based library and classroom programming, and storytelling. Although the collection is non-circulating, it is available for examination by scholars, teachers, librarians, students, and other educators.

For Further Online Reading

Balanced Reading Instruction: A Review of the Literature
Children's learning within the social context of interactive writing depends on many different dynamics. A sociocultural perspective provides an opportunity to view and interpret writing instruction as socially constructed, dynamic, and situated in multiple interdependent cultural and historical contexts.

Electronic Collaboration: Children's Literature in the Classroom
This article is based on a project that explored whether electronic discussion can increase students' breadth and depth of thinking about issues in complex children's literature. Another goal was for teachers to extend their experience into the classroom by engaging their own students in similar projects.

"A Horizon of Possibilities": A Critical Framework for Transforming Multiethnic Literature Instruction
Inclusion Literature
This article from the ALAN Review includes children's and adolescent literature written by parents and teachers related to inclusion issues such as self-esteem and individuality.

Reading Aloud—Are Students Ever Too Old?
This article on the Education World site discusses why children are never too old to be read to. Includes a list of resources on reading aloud.

Using the Internet and Children's Literature to Support Interdisciplinary Instruction
This article describes several types of resources on the Internet for children's literature that may be used to support interdisciplinary instruction: central sites, project sites, author Web sites, lesson plans, and electronic mailing lists to support others as they seek to integrate the Internet and children's literature with classroom instruction.