Mini Research 4 and 5 - Children's Literature Websites and Media Research

Here are the 4 websites I found when looking on-line.

1) Vandergrift's Children's Literature Page

http://www.scils.rutgers.edu/~kvander/ChildrenLit/index.html
This website was created by a professor at Rutgers University. It offers a wealth of questions and resources about children's literature. It even includes issues of race, gender and ethnicity, which is especially appealing for a critical literacy perspective.

2) Database of Award-Winning Children's Literature
http://www.dawcl.com/
This data base allows you to search for books who have won one or more of 78 listed awards from six different countries (USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, England and Ireland). The data base allows you to search for books according to parameters such as age of reader, setting, gender/ethnicity of protagonist, etc.

3) Fairrosa Cyber Library of Children's Literature
http://www.fairrosa.info/
This website is broken into five major parts: archive, reference shelf, reading room, showcase and information. The archive section has discussions on various topics in children's literature available for reading. The reading room had a variety of different types of texts available online, from magazines to full on-line versions of The Secret Garden. The showcase focuses on one specific topic and currently the topic is dragons in children's lit. Finally, the information section offers a place for people to contact the creator and the purpose of the website.

4) Library Things - Group Children's Literature
http://www.librarything.com/groups/childrensliterature
This is a forum where anyone can start or continue discussions related to children's literature. Some of the recent topics were the NEA's top five list of children's books, books that make you cry, and adult books in the format of children's story books.


When completing my media research I found a video that showcases "political bedtime stories." These are books being created from a partisan standpoint but in the format of a children's stories. While the publishers and author's believe children should be exposed to these views and the parents should have the choice of what to read to their children, a college professor offers her input that the books just aren't very well written. Check out the video, it's pretty good, if only to see the character of "Congresswoman Clunkton" who looks strikingly like.....well you'll be able to tell. :)

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/politics/2007/07/31/rowlands.bedtime.story.cnn?iref=videosearch