Portal talk:Children's literature

Portal review
Portal	Children's literature
Classification	PN
Class	P: Language and literature
Subclass	N: General literature
Classifier	AdamBMorgan
Reviewer	Clockery Fairfeld
Notes

Some bibliographies and lists

These books contain reading lists and related information (such as reading age):

• 100 Best Books for Children (via Google Books)
• Book Sense Best Children's Books (via Google Books)

These websites have reading lists that may be useful:

• Reading Lists at Homschool Diner
• Book Lists at the Association for Library Service to Children
• Book Awards & Booklists at the Young Adult Library Services Association
• Book List at Book Adventure
• Reading Lists at the Children's Book Council
• Reading Lists at the International Reading Association

I have noticed a bias towards more recent works, which will still be under copyright, but these resources might be useful building up a list on the portal. - AdamBMorgan (talk) 12:35, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

I've added some of these, along with the contents of Portal:1001 Children's Books You Must Read Before You Grow Up. At present, I've added texts the might be in the public domain. Everything followed by a ? may actually still be under copyright. I'll check them when I can and remove the question mark or delete the line as appropriate. - AdamBMorgan (talk) 19:52, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

While I didn't expect all of the entries to be in public domain, I did think there would be a few more than this (especially those from the 20s-30s). At least we have a few more red links from this now. - AdamBMorgan (talk) 13:27, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

Portal organisation

We need to pause and think about how we order the texts in this portal. Currently the gallery is just in the order in which the works were added. It looks like the "other works" list is too.

Should the works be listed in Title alpha order, Author alpha order, by sub-genre, by age appropriateness, or by something else?

Also, what qualifies a work to be in the gallery? How big should the gallery be?

How do we indicate Featured Text status? Let's also work on getting more of these texts to Featured status. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 20:56, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

Hey Beeswaxcandle,

As a back story, I added texts which were either backed by scans or had pictures; no real impressive reason admittedly. But as the collection has grown, I agree that it certainly needs any organization. As for your suggested ways for improvement, I like the idea of separating by age group, then by title. Although this requires us to make some calls, I imagine we could reference these choices if possible. I imagine roughly three age groups, as doing so could be beneficial in organizing a book about the alphabet from Peter and Wendy. As for which are "featured" in the gallery, maybe we could employ a rotation system like the main page of Wikibooks? - Theornamentalist (talk) 22:15, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

I've been looking around for a standard set of age ranges. I've haven't found a standard but here are some examples:

• 1001 Children's Books You Must Read Before You Grow Up appears to use 0-3, 3+, 5+, 8+ and 12+.
• 100 Best Books for Children uses 0-2 (Board Books), 2-8 (Picture Books), 5-7 (Beginning Readers), 7-9 (Young Readers), 8-11 (Middle Readers) and 11-12 (Older Readers).
• Book Sense Best Children's Books doesn't have ages but uses "Babies and Toddlers", "Picture Books for Younger Children", "Picture Books for Older Children", "Chapter Books", "Middle Grade" and "Young Adult".
• Jacqueline Wilson's website (jacquelinewilson.co.uk) uses (for her own books) 5-7, 7-9, 9-11 and 12+.
• Family Education (school.familyeducation.com) uses 2-4, 5-6, 7-8, 9-10, 11-12 and "Older Teens/Adults".
• childrensbooks.about.com (Link) uses 0-3 (First Books), 3-6 (Pre- to Beginner), 6-10 (Learn to Read), 9-12 (Grades 4-7), "Young Adult Books", "Classics".
• Boise Public Library (Link), the first library on Google, has a few lists based on US grade level.
• Educating Together (Link) uses 0-2, 2-4, 5-7, 7-8, 8-9, 9-10, 10-11 (with UK key stages).
• The Publisher's Association (UK) has apparently recently started using 5+, 7+, 9+ and 11+ (printed on the book near the barcode).

None of these quite match up but I think we could synthesise something from them. I like 1001's approach of having a "x and up" based system rather than a strict age range. It avoids the idea that children can grow out of books or should be past some arbitrary point. Not only is this a problem I found noted in books while I searched but I would quite happily read some of these myself and I am well past all of these age limits. On the other hand, using grades/key stages to match educational systems has advantages and should provide some useful lists in Google searches. - AdamBMorgan (talk) 02:07, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

Merge to Portal:Children's literature

I am failing to see the difference in portals between this and Portal:Children's literature, and I know that some works are appearing on both. I would think that we could merge the two and make this page a redirect to the other. — billinghurst sDrewth 11:30, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

Portal:Children's literature appears to be more of a disambiguation page (with a stronger visual element). I generally agree with this merger, although we have little in the way of space restrictions.

I also think conversion to the box portal format may work best with this portal as it has more visual impact. Alternatively, a hybrid portal with the lists flanked by box elements; maybe converting the gallery into a vertical list specific to each age rating? (Keeping the see also boxes from Children's literature would be nice.)

Alternatively: move Portal:Children's literature to just Portal:Children and modify to include other non-literature portals (for example, education and health related subjects); then this can be moved to the vacant Portal:Children's literature. Those portals may need to be created and populated, however. - AdamBMorgan (talk) 19:14, 7 June 2011 (UTC)