For 75 years, the Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books has provided school and public librarians, educators, and other subscribers outstanding reviews of youth literature. Through brief summaries and critical evaluations of selected titles, the BCCB introduced emerging authors and trends and welcomed readers to the expanding field of children’s books.
The institutional repository IDEALS, or the Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship, offers a digitized archive of the full run of Bulletins from their 1947 beginning. The most recent issues are made available to the University of Illinois community two years after publication and to the public at large twelve years after publication. Reviews written from 2005 to 2021 (Vol. 59-74) are discoverable through Project Muse, a product of Johns Hopkins University.
Below is an interactive timeline of significant BCCB reviews produced throughout the journal’s history.
Contemporary Codes
* Asterisks denote titles of special distinction
R = Recommended
Ad = Additional book of acceptable quality for collections needing more material in the area.
M = Marginal book that is so slight in content or has so many weaknesses in style or format that it should be given careful consideration before purchase.
Legacy Codes
These codes are no longer used by the Bulletin but may be found in past reviews.
SpC = Subject matter or treatment will tend to limit the book to specialized collections.
SpR = A book that will have appeal for the unusual reader only.
Recommended for the special few who will read it.
C.U. = Curricular Use
D.V. = Developmental Values
NR = Not Recommended