Welcome to The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books
We are one of the nation’s leading children’s book review journals for school and public librarians. We provide concise summaries and critical evaluations to help you find the books you need for your library’s collection.
December’s Big Picture
The horror genre provides fertile ground for the human anxiety around infection, especially when lack of understanding makes both illnesses and monstrous entities seem inevitable and invisible. Anne Ursu homes in on the insidious currents of disbelief that surround both topics in this month’s Big Picture, Not Quite a Ghost. Inspired by Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Ursu draws on ghost stories and the renewed attention Long COVID has brought to chronic illness in this story of middle schooler Violet, a girl who must separately deal with an unexplained sickness and a haunting supernatural entity.
Coming Soon: 2023 Blue Ribbons
Our best books of the year for 2023 will be available on January 1, 2024. In the meantime, view last year’s winners here, or check out our archive of winners from previous years.
75 Years of Children’s Literature
The 75th volume year of the Bulletin is being commemorated in a digital timeline exhibit at https://ccb.ischool.illinois.edu/ccb75/. As the Bulletin prepares to move into its future, take a look at its past, in glorious black and white and on bleed-through onionskin paper.
The Center for Children’s Books
The Bulletin is partnered with the Center for Children’s Books, a research center whose mission is to facilitate the creation and dissemination of exemplary and progressive research and scholarship related to youth-focused resources, literature, and librarianship.
Cover illustration from Not Quite a Ghost copyright © 2024 James Firnhaber. Reproduced by permission of the publisher, HarperCollins.
