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.
October’s Big Picture
Fantastical depictions of history often use fantasy elements to provide emotional distance from the tragedies of the past. This month’s Big Picture, Brooms, instead draws on the fantastical to amplify and confront issues of both the past and the present. Set in 1930s Mississippi, this graphic novel follows a team of magic users called the Night Storms, women of color who compete in illegal broom races by night. It is a heartfelt, gripping, and resonant story about power—how the majority wields it, and how marginalized groups reclaim it.
2022 Blue Ribbons Announced
Our best books of the year for 2022 are 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 Brooms copyright © 2023 Teo DuVall. Reproduced by permission of the publisher, Levine Querido.
