LibGuides: Children's Literature and Librarianship: Finding Youth Books

Finding Children's Books at Simmons Library

Hair Love

by Matthew A. Cherry, illus. Vashti Harrison

Cover image for Lost in the Never Woods by Aiden Thomas

Digging for Words: José Alberto Gutiérrez and the Library He Built

by Angela Burke Kunkel ; illus. by Paola Escobar

Last Night at the Telegraph Club

by Malinda Lo

Slip

by Marika McCoola, illus. Aatmaja Pandya

Hands Up!

by Breanna J. McDaniel ; illus. by Shane W. Evans

Strong As Fire, Fierce As Flame

by Supriya Kelkar

Searching the Library Catalog

Are you looking for a primary text in Children's Literature, such as a picturebook, poetry, or Young Adult fiction? The Library Catalog is a great place to start looking for works by individual authors, works in a particular genre or works that focus on a particular topic.

To find a particular title or author...

...use the dropdown arrow in the catalog search box to select Title or Author. Then type the title of the book or name of the author you want into the search box and click search. Keep in mind that the Library may have multiple editions of books, more than one copy of the same edition, or multiple formats of books. Use the information in the catalog to find the editions and formats you need.

To search children's books by keyword...

...use the Catalog's Advanced Search to search for one or more simple keywords such as "school" or "disability" and specify the children's collections, illustration, and/or publication date range that you need.

To search for items in the Knapp Collection of Early Children's Books...

...use the dropdown arrow in the catalog search box to select Call Number. Then type "Knapp" into the search box and click search. Every item in the Knapp collection has the word Knapp in its call number, so this search will bring up the entire collection. You can also use the Advanced Catalog Search to add search terms like "alphabet."

Children's Books by Topic

Below is a quick guide to finding a children's book by topic, author and title in the library catalog. Remember, this is just a quick guide, so if you can't find what you're looking for, please ask a librarian for help!

To find children's books on a particular topic, use a simple keyword search such as "school" or "parents." On the next page, Narrow Search to the Children's Literature Collection under Location.

Other Ways to Find Books

Borrow from Other Libraries

Boston Public Library
Anyone who lives, works, or attends school in Massachusetts is eligible for a BPL library card, allowing you to borrow materials from any of the 25 branches. You can also sign up for an e-card online, which provides access to all BPL's online resources, including OverDrive and Hoopla.
Fenway Library Organization (FLO)
The Fenway Library Organization (FLO) is a consortium of thirty eight academic and special libraries in Massachusetts. Simmons students and faculty can borrow materials from any of the other member libraries.
Massachusetts Library System
Other than BPL, the Mass Library System includes nine library networks. Check out the map to see which network serves the area where you live or work, and use that network's catalog to find and borrow books.
Simmons Library - InterLibrary Loan
Materials that the Simmons University Library does not own may be available from another library. Interlibrary loan services are available to current Simmons University students, faculty, and staff.
Libby (Overdrive)
Libby is a free app where you can borrow ebooks, digital audiobooks, and magazines from your public library.
Library Extension
As you browse books and e-books online, the Library Extension can check your library's online catalog and display the availability of that item on the same page. Works with Chrome, Firefox, and Edge browsers.

Research & Digitized Collections

Alice M. Jordan Collection (Boston Public Library) Historic, contemporary, and international titles are included with the complete works of authors and illustrators represented as well as various editions of fairy tales and old and new classics. The collection contains picture books, fiction, non-fiction, toy and moveable books from the infant to the teen level from the 19th century to the present day.
Arne Nixon Center for the Study of Children's Literature (California State University, Fresno) The Center houses a growing collection of 70,000 books, periodicals, manuscripts, original art, and papers of authors and illustrators has an international and multicultural emphasis with a focus on diversity and inclusion.
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.
Barahona Center for the Study of Books in Spanish for Children and Adolescents (California State University, San Marcos) The Barahona Collection houses thousands of books in Spanish for children and teens.
Children's Collection (University of Reading) The collection currently comprises over 6,000 volumes, including runs of periodicals, embracing children’s literature primarily up to 1940. It is predominantly English and nineteenth century, and includes an estimated 900 pre-1851 titles.
Children's Literature Archive (Ryerson University) This collection now contains about 2500 texts for children written primarily between the late-nineteenth century and the mid-twentieth century, and continues to grow. The collection has particular strengths in adventure stories, fairy tales, and Canadiana.
Children's Literature Digital Collections (University of South Florida) These digital collections of children’s literature from USF’s Special Collections features boys and girls series books from before 1923. This is a growing collection, and more titles are added over time.
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.
Children's Literature Research Collection (Free Library of Philadelphia) The Children’s Literature Research Collection (CLRC) houses a repository of over 85,000 works of children’s literature and an archive of original artwork, manuscripts, and ephemera.
Children’s Literature Collections (State Library of Victoria, Australia) One of their two collections of Australian children’s literature has strengths in early Australian and contemporary imprints in the subjects of fiction, picture books, folktales, myths and legends and anthologies of poetry. The other collection consists predominantly of early to mid 20th century Australian children’s books, pamphlets, music, songs, games and ephemera.
Cotsen Children's Library (Princeton University) The research collection of the Cotsen Children's Library is a historical collection of rare illustrated children's books, manuscripts, original artwork, prints, and educational toys from the 15th century to the present day in over thirty languages.
de Grummond Children's Literature Collection (University of Mississippi) Founded in 1966 by Dr. Lena Y. de Grummond, this Collection holds the original manuscripts and illustrations as well as published books dating from 1530 to the present, including over 300 digitized books.
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.
Kerlan Collection of Children's Literature (University of Minnesota) The Kerlan Collection of Children's Literature holds books, manuscripts, illustrations, comic books, story papers, and other materials related to the creation of historical and modern children's literature, including manuscripts and original artwork.
Lilly Library Children's Literature Collection (Indiana University) The emphasis of this collection is on English language books of the 18th and 19th centuries, but includes a large number of 20th century books and representative works in French and German.
Literature For Children Collection This collection is comprised of volumes from the Departments of Special Collections at several of the State University System of Florida libraries, including the Baldwin Library at University of Florida. It is a growing collection of digitized titles published, predominantly in the United States and Great Britain, from the 17th through the 20th centuries.
Lucile Clarke Memorial Children’s Library (Central Michigan University) Located inside the Clarke Historical Library at CMU, this collection holds a large number of children’s materials including books by and about Indigenous communities, historical schoolbooks, and a large collection of Arthur Rackham books.
Marguerite Archer Collection of Historic Children’s Materials (San Francisco State University) This collection comprises approximately 3,500 historical children's books, textbooks, and periodicals, ephemera, and realia, including puzzles, toys and educational games.
National Centre for Australian Children’s Literature The National Centre for Australian Children’s Literature (formerly Lu Rees Archives) is a comprehensive collection of books and other resources about authors, illustrators, publishers and their creative works.
Osborne Collection of Early Children's Books (Toronto Public Library) This collection's items include book-related art, toys, games and archival items on authorship and promotion of books for young readers. The collection has four parts: - The Osborne Collection (items before 1910) - The Lillian H. Smith Collection (items after 1910) - The Canadiana Collection (items related to Canada) - The Jean Thomson Collection of Original Art (items by Barbara Reid, Maurice Sendak and more)
Playing Soviet: The Visual Languages of Early Soviet Children’s Books, 1917-1953 This interactive database of children’s book illustrations draws the little-known and rarely-seen Soviet children’s books from the Cotsen Collection at Princeton’s Firestone Library.
Prange Digital Children’s Book Collection (University of Maryland) The Gordon W. Prange Children’s Book Collection at the University of Maryland consists of 8,000 picture books, story books, and comic books produced in Japan from 1945-1949. Currently 200 books have been digitized and more will be added to the online digital collection.
UCLA Children's Book Collection This digital archive hosts over 1,800 children’s fiction, poems, and educational books dating from 1728 to 1999.

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.
Internet Archive
Internet Archive is a non-profit library of millions of free books, movies, software, music, websites, and more.
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.

Children's Literature and Librarianship: Finding Youth Books