Reference Reviews

Reference for Students

Children's Catalog, 19th ed. Edited by Anne Price. New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 2006. 1 vol. 1670 p. $ . ISBN 0-8242-1073-5.

For the elementary librarian to grade six, Children's Catalog is the standard reference to use when faced with selection issues for print, electronic resources, and guides to the operation of libraries. It is very helpful in solving challenges to materials (All entries are recommended.) or decisions about what to leave in a collection, what to repair, what to rebind, and what to discard. The 8,934 titles are carefully chosen by the editor and an advisory committee and include books from the U.S. and Canada and the United Kingdom as well when they are distributed in the U.S. The complete bibliographic data in each entry, author, title, publisher, date, number of pages, and price with a grade level designation, is a great help in verification of information. Subject headings, ISBN and a brief annotation with review source complete the entries. Non-fiction is divided by Dewey Decimal Classification Numbers and fiction is in alphabetical order by author. Lists of Recommended Periodicals and Electronic Resources act as a "must" list for library purchases. The "Author, Title, Subject, and Analytical Index" provides a quick start to locating materials. No elementary library should be without this resource. It is even more important for a school when an aide is in charge of library purchasing.