The Classic Guide That Helps You Select the Books the Child You Know Will Love

In this third, fully revised and updated edition of The New York Times Parent's Guide to the Best Books for Children, the children's book editor of The New York Times Book Review personally selects and recommends books for children of every age.

The most comprehensive and authoritative book of its kind has been completely updated for the new millennium. It contains hundreds of new entries, many expanded descriptions, and notations of additional companion and related titles -- more than l,700 in all. The best-loved classics of the twentieth century are included, as well as a thoughtful selection of outstanding titles from the last decade.

Six sections are organized according to reading level: Wordless, Picture, Story, Early Reading, Middle Reading, and Young Adult. In addition to a summary of the book, each entry provides the essential  bibliographic information you need to find a book in your local library or bookstore, including
        title
        author and/or illustrator
        hardcover and/or paperback publisher and publication year
        major awards
        related titles

The unique and most popular feature of the guide is its system of special indexes -- more than sixty in all. They make it easy for parents and grandparents, teachers and librarians, even children themselves, to match the right book to the right child. Browse through the indexes and find titles for every interest and mood: picture books about cats, mice, or dinosaurs for babies; funny books to read aloud to toddlers; series about family life or school or fantasy adventures for a middle-grade child; books on divorce or death; and coming-of-age novels just right for someone starting junior high school. There are also indexes for books about minorities and religion, an age-appropriate reading-level index, and much more.

Lavishly decorated with more than three hundred illustrations from representative titles, the guide also features extra-wide margins for notes on which of your children liked which book, at what age, and why. Thus the guide becomes a family reading record as well as an invaluable resource you'll use again and again.

Average Customer Review: ( 12 customer reviews )
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The author renders a valuable service in examining multiple editions of popular books, for example you might find that one particular treatment of the Mother Goose tales is rather musical and illustrated with pen and ink drawings, while another is more colorfully animated and textually simplified for very young readers.

Unless you really know children's literature, a book like this is an invaluable tool. Similar but more directed resources are Great Books for Boys and Great Books for Girls by Kathleen Odean, which is organized into reading levels and then genre, and includes age level but not page count. Jim Trelease's The Read-Aloud Handbook is a very good, somewhat evangelical, resource organized by genre with age level and page count included in the description.

23 of 23 found the following review helpful:

Delightful resource for involved parents!Nov 09, 2003
By Sokste "KtS"
This book is very straight-forward and easy to use, chock full of useful information. The organization is simple, and listings are complete (containing year published and prizes received, as well as author, illustrator and edition info) and informative. Not only do they give information about the content and it's value to a child, but also its source and its context and an opinion about the best edition in which to invest and the availability of different editions (where useful)!

Wide margins are included, for note-taking.

There are multiple indexes at the end which are invaluable in themselves - about 80 pages worth! The titles are indexed by title, author, illustrator, age-appropriate, and special subject. A bibliography is also included.

This resource is a valuable and delightful resource for any family

25 of 26 found the following review helpful:

Great! Exactly whatI was looking for!Dec 02, 1997

This book was exactly what I was looking for to find new books to read aloud to my children. It reminded me of books that I had read as a child, and suggested new ones that we have loved. In addition, I have a lot of new ideas for presents for my neices and nephews.

18 of 20 found the following review helpful:

For New Parents. If your kids are 6 - up, not for youOct 23, 2005
By will33 "will33"
This is great for early books, for books for toddlers and early readers. The description gives the impression that it is a guide for many years of childhood. My boys are 7 and 8 and there is nothing in this book for them.

But my neices are 1 and 2 and their Mom will be getting this book for Christmas.

17 of 19 found the following review helpful:

Great Books for ChildrenMar 21, 2001

This is a great book with tons of books listed. But, it could be better... The book descriptions are very terse (usually only one or two sentences). .... A couple other things missing that I would have liked to see is the number of pages in each book and approximate reading level (ex. low-4th grade). That would make this guide more useful when picking a book for a book report. Overall the quantity and quality of the books listed and the index in the back that cross-references the books based on subject interests makes this book an invaluable resource.

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