Resources for Children's Book Authors
Websites:
Books:
- Children's Literature: http://www.childrenslit.com/. Website designed for parents, educators, librarians, and childcare providers as a critical review of literature to help their audience make appropriate literary choices for their child. Includes an expansive list of authors and illustrators with biographical information.
- Scholastic: http://www.scholastic.com/home/ This is a great website celebrating children’s books with different pages designed for parents, teachers, kids, administrators, and librarians. The teachers’ section has a way to search for books and authors by grade level, and also has several video interviews with authors that teachers could show in class. The Kids’ section allows children to search for books and authors by genre and includes quick links to Harry Potter, Captain Underpants, and Goosebumps. They not only have a “featured authors” section at the bottom of the page, but also a page with bios and pictures of each author, with a link to the author’s personal web page.
- Children's Library: http://en.childrenslibrary.org/. A website designed for as an online library for children all over the world. Kids can read the books online (they are scanned along with all illustrations) and can change the language of the entire site and all of it’s resources. Can search works by author and illustrator, but otherwise doesn't have much in the way of biographical information.
- Kid's Reads: http://www.kidsreads.com/. Website covering all the bases for new children’s books, with a tab for books coming soon, new series, and a very well-designed author section, where parents or children can browse by author last name. Every day the website posts a new biographical sketch and interview with an author of a popular new book.
Books:
- Childrens’ Books and their Creators, by Anita Silvey Published in 1995, contains biographies of authors and reviews of their books, covering all genres and focusing on mostly 20th century. As this book is geared toward parents, it also contains entries form experts on what children should read at certain ages. This book is also an important document in that it is multicultural, with contributions from writers of all ethnicities.
- 100 Most Popular Children’s Authors: Biographical Sketches and Bibliographies, by Sharron L. McElmeel Handy ready-reference book with engaging biographical sketches, photographs, and pictures of 100 famous authors. Mostly written for children rather than parents, and could be very helpful for any grade-school book report.
- Something About the Author: Facts and Pictures About Authors and Illustrators of Books for Young People V.192, by Lisa Kumar Published in 2009, contains 70 biographies per volume (covering over 10,000 authors in the entire series!) of both established and up-and-coming children’s authors, including pictures and personal life information. Has interesting life anecdotes, photographs, and illustrations.