LibGuides: Children's Literature and Literary Scholarship: Other Youth Literature Collections

Children's Books Online

Many children's books have been digitized and made available online to the public through a variety of sources, including specialized collections such as the Baldwin Library of Historical Children's Literature, as well as from more general collections such as Project Gutenberg and the HathiTrust Digital Library. Search these resources by title to discover digitized copies of classic titles.

Baldwin Library of Historical Children's Literature
The Baldwin Library of Historical Children’s Literature at the University of Florida contains more than 130,000 books and periodicals published in the United States and Great Britain from the mid-1600s to the present day. The Library also has 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.
Children's Literature Digital Resources
Children's Literature Digital Resources is a full-text digital repository of Australian children’s literature from 1830 to 1945. Users can read online the complete texts of a selection of early Australian children’s literature, both popular and rare. Digitised items include children’s and young adult fiction, poetry, short stories, and picture books. Users can also read related full text critical articles that were digitised as part of the project.
Children's Literature from the Library of Congress
The US Library of Congress has digitized and made available a number of rare books, including children's books. On this page you can find high-quality scanned-in copies of rare editions of books from the mid-nineteenth century forward.
HathiTrust Digital Library
HathiTrust Digital Library is a digital preservation repository and highly functional access platform. It provides long-term preservation and access services for public domain and in copyright content from a variety of sources, including Google, the Internet Archive, Microsoft, and in-house partner institution initiatives.
International Children's Digital Library
The ICDL Foundation's goal is to build a collection of books that represents outstanding historical and contemporary books from throughout the world. Ultimately, the Foundation aspires to have every culture and language represented so that every child can know and appreciate the riches of children's literature from the world community.
Project Gutenberg
Project Gutenberg offers over 36,000 free ebook versions of titles in the public domain to download to your PC, Kindle, Android, iOS or other portable device. Choose between ePub, Kindle, HTML and simple text formats.
The Literature For Children Collection
Literature for Children is a collection of the treasures of children's literature published largely in the United States and Great Britain from before 1850 to beyond 1950. The collection is of international significance for researchers who study historical, cultural, social and literary aspects of children's literature. More than half of the volumes collected here are unique among collections of children's literature elsewhere, whether in paper, microform, or digital format.

Comparative Editions

One of the strengths of digital collections is that they make it possible to compare a number of editions with the click of a mouse. Below is a small selection of available comparative editions of classic titles from the digital collections on this page. Remember, this is just a small selection, so if you can't find what you're looking for, please ask a librarian for help!

The "Nursery Alice"
Call Number: Baldwin Library of Historical Children's Literature
Publication Date: Macmillan & Co., 1890
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Call Number: Baldwin Library of Historical Children's Literature
Publication Date: Henry Altemus Company
The Secret Garden
Call Number: Library of Congress
Publication Date: F.A. Stokes, 1911
Mother Goose's Nursery Rhymes
Call Number: Project Gutenberg
Publication Date: George Routledge and Sons, 1877
A Child's Garden of Verses
Call Number: Library of Congress
Publication Date: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1895