Parent's Guide to the Best Books for Children » (3RD, REVISED & UPDATED)

EDEN ROSS LIPSON has been the children's book editor for The New York Times Book Review for more than fifteen years. She has raised four children and lives in New York City.

The Classic Guide That Helps You Select the Books the Child You Know Will Love

In this third, fully revised and updated edition of The New York Times Parent's Guide to the Best Books for Children, the children's book editor of The New York Times Book Review personally selects and recommends books for children of every age.

The most comprehensive and authoritative book of its kind has been completely updated for the new millennium. It contains hundreds of new entries, many expanded descriptions, and notations of additional companion and related titles — more than l,700 in all. The best-loved classics of the twentieth century are included, as well as a thoughtful selection of outstanding titles from the last decade.

Six sections are organized according to reading level: Wordless, Picture, Story, Early Reading, Middle Reading, and Young Adult. In addition to a summary of the book, each entry provides the essential  bibliographic information you need to find a book in your local library or bookstore, including
        title
        author and/or illustrator
        hardcover and/or paperback publisher and publication year
        major awards
        related titles

The unique and most popular feature of the guide is its system of special indexes — more than sixty in all. They make it easy for parents and grandparents, teachers and librarians, even children themselves, to match the right book to the right child. Browse through the indexes and find titles for every interest and mood: picture books about cats, mice, or dinosaurs for babies; funny books to read aloud to toddlers; series about family life or school or fantasy adventures for a middle-grade child; books on divorce or death; and coming-of-age novels just right for someone starting junior high school. There are also indexes for books about minorities and religion, an age-appropriate reading-level index, and much more.

Lavishly decorated with more than three hundred illustrations from representative titles, the guide also features extra-wide margins for notes on which of your children liked which book, at what age, and why. Thus the guide becomes a family reading record as well as an invaluable resource you'll use again and again.

Publishers Weekly

Now in its third edition, revised and updated, The New York Times Parent's Guide to the Best Books for Children by Eden Ross Lipson cites the top 1,001 children's books of the 20th century. In her introduction, the children's book editor of the Times describes the Harry Potter phenomenon and its impact on adult and child readers as well as the blurring lines between books for young adults versus adults. The titles, divided by age range into six sections, progress from wordless books to "middle reading books" classics such as E.B. White's Charlotte's Web and Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (as well as J.K. Rowling's British boy wizard), through young adult books such as S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders and Walter Dean Myers's Scorpions. Plenty of white space allows room for artwork in the margins, such as a fabulous view of a certain lovable elephant riding down an elevator, from Jean de Brunhoff's The Story of Babar. (Crown/Three Rivers, $18 paper all ages ISBN 0-8129-3018-5; Nov.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

Contents Acknowledgments—/—ix Introduction—/—xi Wordless Books—/—1
Picture Books—/—11
Story books—/—107
Early Reading Books—/—229
Middle Reading Books—/—259
Young Adult Books—/—365
Indexes—/—391
Bibliography—/—519