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Education - Children's Literature in the Classroom

A guide for locating grade-appropriate children's literature for use in the classroom.

Welcome

Children's Literature in the Classroom

Welcome to UVic Libraries!  My name is Pia Russell, and I'm UVic's Education Librarian.  Throughout this guide I have outlined resources held by UVic Libraries on a variety of special topics related to the use of children's literature in K-12 classrooms. 

If you are looking for library resources related to literary theory and cultural studies approaches to children's literature, please consult the library guide titled: Children's Literature - Criticism, Interpretation, and History 

Your course instructors are the best sources of information, ask them for their recommendations for useful introductory resources.

Thanks for taking a peek at this library guide; let me know if it was helpful, or if you have recommendations for additional resources to be listed on this guide.

 

Children's Literature Comprehensive Database

The Children's Literature Comprehensive Database is a fantastic place to search for children's literature by reading level, category, or genre.  UVic Libraries doesn't have every book included in the database, but we do have a lot.  Once you find some books in CLCD, then search by title in the UVic catalogue.

Storybooks Canada is "a free open educational resource that promotes literacy and language learning in homes, schools and communities."  

Indigenous Storybooks is an open educational resource making levelled-texts available in Indigenous languages.

Evaluating learning resources

There are many resources available to teachers that provide guidance on how to critically and effectively evaluate children's literature and learning resources generally.  Here are a few to get you started:

 

EDCI 330 (January 2022)

If you are taking EDCI 330 in the January to April 2022 term, you will learn how to evaluate learning resources within the context of BC's curriculum.  Here is a library tutorial on how to do this and how to find related resources within UVic Libraries' collection.  By the end of this video, you will have been introduced to the following:

  1. How to use the Focused Education K-12 resource collection including commonly applied evaluation criteria
  2. How some school districts in BC guide their teachers to evaluate resources independently
  3. How to find high-quality Indigenous education resources that consider the authors' own voices and lived experiences
  4. How to apply advanced search refinements to locate children's fiction and non-fiction resources by using databases such as the Children's Literature Comprehensive Database
  5. How to locate specific resources within UVic's holdings by searching by title and author
  6. How to seek further help from your subject librarian
Creative Commons License
This work by The University of Victoria Libraries is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License unless otherwise indicated when material has been used from other sources.