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for adults.
    In the area of fiction , we get a clearer breakdown by age level, as specific forms of fiction have been created to meet the unique needs and interests of children at various ages. Picture books have been especially developed as an art form with young children in mind. These thirty-two-page creations ingeniously combine words and pictures to tell stories preschoolers want to hear again and again. Easy readers are the next step up from picture books. They are consciously created to help build the skills of children who are just learning to read. Transitional books move up one step more to serve as a bridge between easy readers and children’s novels, often called chapter books . At all levels, children’s fiction covers a range of subjects, themes, and styles and represents some of the best writing we find in the world of literature today.
    In the upcoming chapters, we will take a closer look at all these categories. Each one merits special consideration and requires a slightly different approach. Since this book is intended for people who are new to the field of children’s books, I will provide a brief history of the differenttypes of children’s books as they have developed in U.S. trade publishing so that you can get a sense of how these books came to be. In discussing critical standards, I will use examples from well-known and easily available books that also represent some of the best books of their type. I recommend that you seek out any of these books that you don’t know so that you can read them to build your familiarity with the literature.
    Throughout the book, I will suggest questions you can ask yourself as you go on to evaluate books on your own. These questions are intended not as a test but to help you begin to make concrete critical judgments about what you are reading. Some of the questions may already seem obvious to you. If so, that’s good! You are well on your way to being a critical reader and a responsible reviewer. As you gain experience with book evaluation, these sorts of questions will become second nature to you.
    Finally, there is no substitute for reading widely yourself. The more experience you have as a reader of children’s books, the easier it will be for you to think about the one you have just read. One of the most important skills you can acquire is the ability to place a book in an appropriate context. How does it measure up against others of its type? Are there, in fact, others of its type? Or is this something fresh and new? One of the greatest thrills for a children’s book reviewer is to find the book that is truly innovative and groundbreaking, or completely satisfying and close to perfect. That’s what keeps us all reading.

CHAPTER 2
Books of Information
    Nonfiction is an essential part of every child’s library, whether the child reads it for specific information, recreation, or both. Many children prefer to read nonfiction exclusively, and they may voraciously read every children’s book a library owns on the subject of horses or ancient Egypt or basketball. Young readers sometimes go through phases during which they will read only biographies, for example, or books about dinosaurs. Some children like to browse through highly visual books of information, pausing to read captions and perhaps a bit of corresponding text when a picture grabs their attention. Others trek to the library, looking for books on a particular topic they have been assigned to report on at school. Whatever their motivation for reading nonfiction, children deserve to have books of information that are accurate, engaging, and well written.
    The past few decades have seen great changes in children’s nonfiction, many of which may be traced to the mid-1980s. Nonfiction languished throughout the 1970s, due to cuts in federal funding that previously had supported school library purchases of nonfiction (science in particular), then made a comeback after several titles were cited as Newbery