Newbery Classroom Home '

There are many interesting and dynamic Web pages for children's and young adult literature. Organized by educators, librarians, commercial organizations, private organizations students, and others interested in aspects of our work, they supply valuable and sometimes unique access to events of concern to the broad community of children's literature users--including children.
Where readily available, the authors of the following pages have been indentified. In several instances, additional biographical information has been supplied to credential the information being provided.

The original purpose of The Newbery Classroom Home ' is to point to pages of interest to ch. literary scholars in the Newbery Classroom at Diversity University.

NB: in Moo vocabulary, ' is a line command used to page somebody; thus, to members of Diversity University (and other Moo communities), the heading of this file appears as "The Newbery Classroom Homepage"

General sources

A few individuals, whether working on their own or cooperatively, within organizations, have constructed sets of Web pages that attempt to survey the many kinds of Webbed information relevant to children's literary studies, both by establishing links to pre-existent sources and by providing original documentation. While organizations provide deeper access, individual Web pages offer valuable original information, as well as interesting idiosyncratic viewpoints and selection criteria. Some of these are listed below.

700+ Great Sites, compiled by the Children and Technology Commitee of the Association for Library Service to Children, a division of the American Library Association, offers an organized compendium of internet resources principally for children, including many sites of interest for the scholar and teacher. OZKidz Literature concentrates on Australian children's and young adult literature. The Children's Literature Web Guide constructed and maintained by David K. Brown provides "internet resources related to books for children and young adults." The best coverage for Canadian children's literature. The Children's Literature Sampler, is "a source of information about books and related materials for children through grade 8," elegantly constructed by the late Glenn E. Estes, Professor and Director of the School for Information Science, at the University of Knoxville, Tennessee, and now maintained by his former colleagues. The History of Children's Literature is the most authoritative source for a wide, historical survey of the field, created and maintained by Kay Vandergrift, Professor at the School of Communication, Information and Library Studies at Rutgers University. HarperCollins Children's Books includes biographical information about authors and artists. The Internet Public Library : Youth Division provides access to authors and illustrators through various web and gopher menus. Fairrosa's "Cyberlibrary of Children's Literature" offers a dynamic mix of information about authors, artists, discussion groups, book lists, original texts and (as they say) a whole lot more, in a very niftily designed package. One of the broadest compilations of source material undertaken by a single individual I have seen. Similarly, Inkspot, created and maintained by Debbie Ridpath Ohi, offers a wide sweep of information relating to children's literature, some of it original. IBBY, The Internationall Board on Books for Young People, "promotes international understanding through children's books." This site includes information about _Bookbird,_ IBBY's journal, and the many worthwhile activities IBBY undertakes to foster an understanding of international children's books.

Genre Studies

The Encyclopedia Mythica offers a broad ranging set of definitions and descriptions of matters mythological, as well as legendary and folkloric. In a similar vein, Myth and Legend from Ancient Times to the Space Age created and maintained by Philip R. "Pib" Burns, of the Emerging Technologies group, offers information on Pirates, Vampires, UFO's, Cryptozoology and Werewolves, as well as myth and legend. "Pib's" collection of links to Web resources on General Folklore and Mythology is particularly useful. The Medieval World created and maintained by Edward T. Sullivan, a graduate student at the School for Information Science, at the University of Knoxville, Tennessee, accesses a unique collection of bibliographies of Medieval materials relevant to children and young adults. The Oz Books Revealed affords access to a collection of bibliographies of the Oz books, by Frank L. Baum, Martha Plumly Thompson, and others; also access video and audio adaptations. Kay Vandergrift offers a very thorough discussion of the issues involved in Snow White. This is an ideal source for teachers because it suggests questions for class consideration along with multiple textual variants and illustrational interpretations of the same passages, for comparison. An interesting forerunner of Kay's Snow White cite is offered by the Cinderella Project at the University of Southern Mississippi, which offers scanned pages of a dozen publications, ranging in date from 1729 to 1912. Although the images are small, the variety is a good basis for quick comparisons. See also the Little Red Riding Hood Project, also at USM, which provides a text only version for character based browsers.

Author and Illustrator Studies

Although information about authors and illustrators constitute fundamental parts of Web pages with a general focus, here, for convenience sake, are links to information assembled about particular authors and illustrators, and to menus accessing information about various authors or illustrators.

The Yahoo Children's Authors Page offers links to a variety of author-related sites, including L. Frank Baum, The Lewis Carroll Homepage, maintained by Joel M. Birenbaum, Dr. Seuss, Cyber-Seuss and Grinch Net ,-- Maud Hart Lovelace , and Mark Twain. Very useful avenues into Twain's work are provided at several sources, which include: Ever the Twain Shall Meet, largely a collection of Twain texts, maintained by "Joseph," this page lists resources by or about Mark Twain; Mark Twain Resources on the Web, a fairly encyclopedic compendium including "texts of his books to an analysis of his character's appearance on Star Trek: The Next Generation." This site is maintained by its creator, Jim Zwick , a doctoral candidate in the Interdisciplinary Social Science Program and an affiliate of the Program on the Analysis and Resolution of Conflicts at Syracuse University, and the editor of Mark Twain's Weapons of Satire: Anti-Imperialist Writings on the Philippine-American War (Syracuse: Syracuse Univ. Press, 1992; Philippine edition, Manila: Popular Book Store, 1994); and The Mark Twain Forum Homepage created and maintained by Taylor Roberts, a student in the linguistics program at MIT and creator of the model Listserv discussion group, The Mark Twain Forum. It features images appropriate to Twain studies, but its main virtue is its Survival Guide, a document enabling efficient participation in the MT list. Inkspot: Authors provides links to information about past authors, as well as contemporary ones. Some past authors not available elsewhere include Jane Austen and Arthur Ransome. Some contemporary writers of note include Kevin McColley and R.L. Stine. Fairrosa's Authors' and Illustrators' page provides broad access to information about children's authors available on the Web. In addition to some of the authors listed above, Fairrosa includes links to biographical material available through the Scholastic Press gopher menu (on authors and illustrators, such as Molly Bang, Joan Aiken, Mitsumasa Anno, Roald Dahl, among others), and through the Internet Public Library Ask the Author page, which includes information about Jane Yolen, Avi, Lois Lowry Robert Cormier, among others. Jenna Brown offers Children's Literature Authors and Illustrators, including links to some of the authors and illustrators referenced here, and other contemporary authors and illustrators, Jan Brett Roald Dahl, and others. Many of these are available directly through homepages maintained by their publishers. Rachelle Linner, an assistant librarian at The Winsor School, in Boston, has created and maintains The E.B. White Homepage, with useful biographical and bibliographical information about White and several of his works.

Children's illustrators are represented by Ink Spot, both through links to gopher and web menus and original documentation. Inkspot also furnishes "mailto" links to a number of illustrators, for transmitting email. The beautiful, highly graphical William Blake Archive, self- described as "a hypermedia archive supported by The Getty Grant Fund and the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities at the University of Virginia" is an innovative exploration of cutting edge technology. Blake's books normally associated with children's literature, his illuminated _Songs of Innocence_ (1789) and _Songs of Experience (1794) will be available between 1996 and 1997. Additional Blake materials can be viewed at various sites, including The William Blake Page, created and maintained by Richard Record, of chiefly graphical value. Homearts maintains a nifty Maurice Sendak site. One of this master's acknowledged influences, Winsor McCay an innovative pioneer animator and creator of Little Nemo in Slumberland, is handsomely represented by Thomas Gladysz, who supplies links to other sites relevant to his interests in animation and the comics. Also of note, particularly for those whose browsers have graphical capability is Winsor McCay Wide awake in Dreamland, created and maintained by The Realist Wonder Society. Helen Younger, an antiquarian bookseller specializing in children's books, created and maintains an Arthur Rackham page, with a strong bibliophilic emphasis. ZuZu (?) maintains a slick site for Peter Sis, and a German organization Struwwelpeter.com maintains a trilinqual site for people seeking to read and look at pictures of (what else?) Struwwelpeter.

Original Texts

Although most of the Web pages included above provide access to electronic texts within the public domain, here, again for convenience, are links to specific libraries of electronic texts, and to selected texts, themselves. note: critical texts are included below, in Independent Scholarship

New Mexico State University actively maintains a gopher menu of children's literary texts, for which (I believe) Donnie Curtis is primarily responsible. Yahoo also supplies whole text access to a number of original texts. In addition to Carroll and Twain (mentioned above), Yahoo links to writings by Louisa May Alcott, Roald Dahl and Laura Ingalls Wilder among others (35 at last count). Further links can be found at Electronic Children's Books, which operate through a gopher menu. Classics at the Online Literature Library, created and maintained by Peter Galbavy, gives whole text access to works by authors of children's and young adult literature, including Baum, Carroll, Dickens, Verne, Wells, and many others (18 last count). While most of these links connect to plaintext versions, the Classics texts have been marked up in html. Alice in Wonderland (one of three Carroll texts) even includes images. The University of Michigan has, in its Modern English Texts, placed many public domain texts, including children's texts online in html, as well as in sgml.

Interesting perspectives on original texts are offered by the Cinderella Project at the University of Southern Mississippi, and Kay Vandergrift's Snow White cite, mentioned above.

A Miscellany of Useful Sources

Research Collections

Web pages documenting outstanding collections of children's literature are also available online, and these shall be linked to this page presently. These include The deGrummond Children's Literature Research Collection at the University of Southern Mississippi. A web site for Princeton's Cotsen Collection includes a miscellany of links and pictures from the collection and advertisements for the architect of the proposed building. Kay Vandergrift's Special Collections Page includes links to many special collections of children's books through the United States and England.

Independent Scholarship

In addition to the above, web pages focussed exclusively on original research have been constructed by scholars working in the field. While some scholars, such as Kay Vandergrift and Jim Zwick have included citations and other modes of access to their work within their Web pages, which themselves have relevance to children's literary studies, other scholars, working in diverse fields, have provided pages of materials relevant to children's literature within a constellation of pages of broader application. These will be listed below. The Lion and the Unicorn makes several of its published essays available, including Suzanne Rahn's Green Worlds for Children from its issue 19.2 (1995) 149-170. Linnea Hendrickson's Children's Literature: A Guide to the Criticism, represents an indispensible research tool, encyclopedic in scope, for all serious scholars and students of children's literature.

Also of interest are Russell Hunt's Homepage, which includes references to work he has done on reading development; also of interest Caroline Hunt's Homepage; Caroline teaches literature at the College of Charleston, and includes Young Adolescent literature and Science Fiction among her classes. In Search of Watty Piper: A Brief History of the "Little Engine" Story, compiled by Roy E. Plotnick, at the University of Illinois, at Chicago, provides a list of questions squarely focused upon the story's authorship and publication history.

Exhibitions

Because the Diversity University browser can show only text, the following links may seem at times oddly incomplete. Notwithstanding this, the usefulness of the information provided by exhibitions seems an adequate justification for including them on the Newbery Classroom Home '.

The following exhibitions and illustrated pages on Pop up books range from predominantly visual with little text to almost exclusively text, and are presented in that order. Magical Movable Books Exhibits, provided by the University of Southern California, is a miniature delicacy; Moving Tales: Paper Engineering and Children's Pop Up Books, Foyer, State Library of Victoria, combines a rich historical essay, a bibliography and acatalogue of the exhibition not seen. The most impressive exhibition of pop up books is, without a doubt, The POP UP WORLD of Ann Montanaro, which includes a fine history of pop ups, detailed bibliographical data and connections to the preceding exhibitions. "Picturing Childhood" , mounted by UCLA, is self-described as "an online version of the catalog produced to accompany an exhibition held at UCLA at the Armand Hammer Museum of Art and Cultural Center, Los Angeles, April 16 through June 29, 1997." At the center of this catalogue is an essay by Cynthia Burlingham, "The Evolution of the Illustrated Children's Book," which looks at four centuries of children's book illustrations and traces developmental themes. Picturing Childhood: Illustrated Children's Books from University of California Collections, 1550-1990, presents an exhuberantly graphic site with a scholarly essay by Cynthia Burlingham. This site is an online version of the catalog produced to accompany an exhibition held at UCLA at the Armand Hammer Museum of Art and Cultural Center, Los Angeles, April 16 through June 29, 1997. The University of Delaware's exhibition, WORLD OF THE CHILD: Two Hundred Years of Children's Books, curated by Iris Snyder, offers a modest but nonetheless engaging walk-through of historical children's books.

Antiquarian Booksellers

Antiquarian booksellers specializing in historical children's books have come on line, some with scholarly essays to supplement their fine bibliographic descriptions. One such is Helen Younger, whose Aleph-Bet Homepage includes lengthy lists of desirable titles with brief, introductory material of some illumination. For people wishing to browse dealers' catalogues on line, The ABAA Booknet offers a very useful search engine that accesses several full lists of antiquarian children's books. These include Bromers Books and Justin G. Schiller, Ltd, as well as Helen Younger, mentioned above. While intended for the upscale customer, the catalog descriptions contained in these publications provide solid introductions to the descriptive bibliography of rare children's books.

Child_lit: Theory and Criticism of Children's Literature

The Child_lit home page, organized by the founder and provider of Child_lit, Michael Joseph, provides information about the history and purpose of the list and how to subscribe. The Child_lit archives, provides web-based access to the last two year's of list discussions. Compiled by Susan Stan, at the University of Minnesota's General College. Child_lit in the Classroom is a highly effective tool for educators who desire to use Child_lit in the classroom.
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