Literature for Children - Finding Resources: Home

There are so many great books available for preK-12 students it can be hard to know where to start. This guide will help direct you to resources that have done some of the work for you, highlighting award-winning and "best of" titles that can jump-start classroom book selection.

Image credit: "Incidental Comics" by Grant Snider

Read widely to get a feel for what's available and what's trending. And be sure to keep in mind the concept of literature providing children with "windows, mirrors, and sliding glass doors." This theory was created by Rudine Sims Bishop when discussing the value of sharing literature with children that highlights a diverse range of experiences. This concept is best explained in the following quote that originally appeared in her article "Mirrors, Windows, and Sliding Glass Doors" - published in the Summer 1990 issue of Perspectives (vol. 6 no. 3) :

"Books are sometimes windows, offering views of worlds that may be real or imagined, familiar or strange. These windows are also sliding glass doors, and readers have only to walk through in imagination to become part of whatever world has been created and recreated by the author. When lighting conditions are just right, however, a window can also be a mirror. Literature transforms human experience and reflects it back to us, and in that reflection we can see our own lives and experiences as part of the larger human experience. Reading, then, becomes a means of self-affirmation, and readers often seek their mirrors in books."