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.
September’s Big Picture
At some point, most boys internalize that it’s not okay to cry—whether it’s from an adult, a peer, or the soup of children’s media that still traffics heavily in gender stereotypes. Girl power abounds, but children of all genders are limited by a version of masculinity that prizes power, stoicism, and self-reliance above all else. With simple yet emotive text and vibrant, evocative artwork, author Jess Townes and illustrator Daniel Miyares provide a potent antidote for such messages in this month’s Big Picture, Sometimes I Cry.
2022 Blue Ribbons Announced
Our best books of the year for 2022 is available now! We were lucky this year to see a sizeable increase in the diverse identities and ideas represented in literature for youth, and with that in mind, we couldn’t help but expand our own award list—there were just too many stellar examples of our field’s growing inclusivity. Happy reading!
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 Sometimes I Cry. Text copyright © 2023 by Jess Townes. Cover image copyright © 2023 Daniel Miyares. Reproduced by permission of the publisher, Farrar, Straus and Giroux /Macmillan.
