In celebration of the Week of the Young Child™, Andersen Library sends an extra shout out to the UW-Whitewater Children’s Center staff and intern students who nurture our littlest UW-W community members. They are our local heroes, cultivating early reading habits in many ways, one of those by making the special trek to Andersen Library with their classes for story times and free reading. Have you read a little one a book lately? If you’re like me, you have favorites from “back when” that you can’t wait to share again and again. Cat in the Hat is one of my earliest reading memories. Does Andersen Library have a copy? Sure does! Are there other books like it if I wanted to pull together a collection of similarly themed books for a reading corner, a teaching unit, or just for fun? And who is this Pete the Cat character that I keep hearing about?
Let’s find out by using NoveList K-8, the kid sibling of NoveList and also a Badgerlink resource available to all Wisconsin residents. I can search for Stop that Ball! by title, and find recommendations for read-alikes. I also notice that I can browse books that share qualities of Cat in the Hat such as “stories in rhyme.” I might browse through the genres to “children’s poetry” and find just the one for an aspiring reader or just the right collection for celebrating Poetry Month. NoveList K-8 also includes many picture book extenders to help build your story time activities. These are great time savers!
Children’s Literature Comprehensive Database *(CLCD) is another excellent resource for pointing parents, teachers and adults to books to use for specific interest and reading levels, and includes full-text reviews from 27 sources of reviews including Madison’s Cooperative Children’s Book Center. CLCD is getting ready to roll out a new interface and new services*. Besides finding 7 full-text reviews for Splat the Cat, you will find themed book lists* which are added monthly. Also new to CCLD will be a live WorldCat connection; look for Splat the Cat in the new interface*, click the WorldCat tab, and when the new site is fully functional you will be able to see whether Andersen Library has the book without performing a separate HALCat search. Isn’t that just the cat’s meow?
As always, if you’d like assistance with finding additional materials, please ask a librarian.
*When the new CCLD site becomes active, the links to the beta site will no longer be funtional, so you will need to use the link from the library’s A-Z Databases listing.
