One of my warmest childhood memories is of my mother reading Miss Pickerell
Goes to Mars (MacGregor) to my older sister and me. We were in elementary school
and quite capable of reading it ourselves, but we had grown accustomed to having
our mother read to us each night before bedtime. Stories sounded so much better
when she read them. Another happy memory is of my sixth-grade teacher, Mr. Conway,
reading a chapter a day from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Twain). The books he
read that year helped pass the afternoons in the hot portable classroom. Each day we
begged him to read one more chapter or even just two more pages because we could
not wait to find out what happened next.
Do you have similar memories of your parents’ and teachers’ reading to you?
Because you are reading this book, you are most likely a teacher or a parent, or
you intend to become a teacher or parent. This book will introduce you to the
vast and wonderful world of children’s literature, so you will be prepared to
create such memories for the children in your classroom or your home. In this
textbook, when I talk about your children, I am referring both to students and
to your own children.
Within these pages I will acquaint you with numerous books appropriate
for children from birth through age 13—the preschool and elementary school
years. This textbook is intentionally brief; after all, most of your reading should
be children’s books—not a book about children’s books. Therefore, I will not
attempt to cover the many fabulous books available for middle school and high
school students; several other good textbooks do focus on literature especially
for adolescents and young adults (e.g., Donelson & Nilsen, 2008, and Brown &
Stephens, 2007).