Children's & Young Adult Literature and Resources : Special Topics

Reading Rockets (RR) is maintained by WETA, a prominent public television network in the state of Washington. According to the RR website, Reading Rockets is a "national public media literacy initiative offering information and resources on how young kids learn to read, why so many struggle, and how caring adults can help." The website features a wealth of multimedia resources related to youth literacy.

Accessible with your UW-Madison NetID, TeachingBooks is a robust educational resource for readers, teachers, librarians, or "anyone who enjoys books for children and teens." The website features book lists; teaching resources for individual books and book series; information about authors, book awards, and more.

The Global Literature in Libraries Initiative works to raise the visibility of world literature for adults and children by facilitating close and direct collaboration between translators, librarians, publishers, editors, and educators. Their website includes the annual Global Literature in Libraries
Translated YA Book Prize and resources for exploring international literature.

(from their website) The International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY) is a non-profit organization which represents an international network of people from all over the world who are committed to bringing books and children together. (add more)

The mission of the International Children's Digital Library Foundation (ICDL Foundation) is to support the world's children in becoming effective members of the global community - who exhibit tolerance and respect for diverse cultures, languages and ideas -- by making the best in children's literature available online free of charge. The Foundation pursues its vision by building a digital library of outstanding children's books from around the world and supporting communities of children and adults in exploring and using this literature through innovative technology designed in close partnership with children for children.

(from their website) "The United States Board on Books for Young People (USBBY) is a nonprofit organization devoted to building bridges of international understanding through children's and young adult books; it serves as the U.S. national section of the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY)." The website includes an archive of their newsletter, booklists of book award winners and nominees, including the IBBY Hans Christian Andersen and the Alida Cutts Lifetime Membership Award, as well as and Outstanding International Books List and an Outstanding Books for Young People with Disabilities book list.

Founded in 1971, Project Gutenberg offers over 36,000 free eBooks to be downloaded onto PCs, Kindles, Androids, iOS, or other portable devices. The eBooks are formatted in ePub, Kindle, HTML and simple text formats. There is no registration or fee required. EBooks are available for free in the United States because their copyright has expired. Readers outside of the United States should check the copyright laws of their countries before downloading or redistributing the eBooks from this site.

"The purpose of this database is 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. I expect the user to be a librarian or a teacher intervening for a child-reader, however anyone may make use of it to find the best in children's literature including parents, book store personnel, and children and young adults themselves." -DAWL

"19th Century UK Periodicals provides full-text, fully searchable access to hundreds of magazines and journals with full color, high quality digital facsimiles of all articles. This is an invaluable resource for the study of British life in the 19th century. Few of the materials in this extensive online collection have ever been reissued in any format since original publication. This database currently provides a wide range of subject content consisting of: Part I: New Readerships: Women’s, Children’s, Humour and Leisure/Sport; and Part II: Empire: Travel and Anthropology, Economics, Missionary & Colonial. Title lists are available on the Gale site. The contents of this collection are available for text analysis and data mining through Gale's Digital Scholar Lab."

(from their website) "The de Grummond Children's Literature Collection is one of North America's leading research centers in the field of children's literature. Although the Collection has many strengths, the main focus is on American and British children's literature, historical and contemporary. Founded in 1966 by Dr. Lena Y. de Grummond, the Collection holds the original manuscripts and illustrations of more than 1,400 authors and illustrators, as well as 180,000+ published books dating from 1530 to the present."

(from their website) "The Baldwin Library of Historical Children’s Literature in the Department of Special Collections at the University of Florida's George A. Smathers Libraries contains more than 115,000 volumes published in the United States and Great Britain from the mid-1600s to present day. The Library also has small holdings in manuscript collections, original artwork, and assorted ephemera such as board games, puzzles, and toys. The Baldwin Library is known for comparative editions of books, with special emphasis on Robinson Crusoe, Pilgrim’s Progress, Aesop’s Fables, and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. The Library also has the largest collection of Early American Juvenile Imprints of any academic institution in the United States."

This website features links to and information about the collections within Kent State University's Reinberger Children's Library Center. The collections include: Virtual Exhibit of Original Art; Reinberger Children's Room Catalog; Marantz Picturebook Collection for the Study of Picturebook Art; and special research collections such as folklore books, publisher posters from "renowned picturebook illustrators", multicultural literature and ephemera, a Beatrix Potter collection, and more.

Part of the Department Special Collections within the Princeton University Library, "the Cotsen research collection of illustrated children's books, manuscripts, original artwork, prints, and educational toys from the 15th century to the present day is the benefaction of Lloyd E. Cotsen '50."

(from their website) "The Kerlan Collection at the University of Minnesota is one of the world's great children's literature archives. The Collection includes books, original manuscripts and illustrations, and related materials. The materials in the Collection are studied by teachers, librarians, students, authors, illustrators, translators, and critics from Minnesota and around the world. The Kerlan Collection contains more than 100,000 children's books as well as original manuscripts, artwork, galleys, and color proofs, and other production materials for 1,700 authors and illustrators. A large number of books in the collection are inscribed by the author or illustrator. The Collection includes books that are significant in the history of children's literature, award books, classics, and representative books from around the world."