Criteria for Reviewing Children’s Books

Abstract

More than 5,000 juvenile books are published each year. For this reason school and children’s librarians depend on reviews to assist them with their selection responsibilities. Through a review of professional literature, we identified 10 criteria that librarians, authors, editors, and publishers thought were important to include in a book review. Using content analysis, we applied the criteria to 152 reviews of 1996 Notable Books for Children in four journals commonly used by school and children’s librarians. We found that although the journals include several of the criteria for quality book reviews, no single journal stood out as consistently providing all the criteria. The findings can be used by children’s books reviewers, librarians with the responsibility of selecting reviewing journals and children’s books, and researchers interested in further studies to help determine the criteria needed for quality book reviews.