Reference Reviews

Lawrence Looks at Books

A to Zoo: Subject Access to Children’s Picture Books, Supplement to the 7^th Edition, edited by Carolyn W. Lima and Rebecca L. Thomas. 191p. Westport, CT: Libraries Unlimited, 2008. 978-1-59158-672-2; 2008-6033. $45.

For 27 years, Carolyn Lima’s guide to picture books has been a staple for parents, teachers and librarians trying to select books to encourage young readers. School librarian and university professor Rebecca Thomas now helps keep the classic current. The guides begin with a list of subject headings, thereby allowing the user to divine the structured arrangement of entries. The true subject guide lists books by author and title under hundreds of topics, ranging from ABC books and accidents to the zodiac and zoos. Monsters, nightmares, hugs, kisses, moving, sleepovers, frogs and princes are among the topics covered. A bibliographic guide arranged by author provides ordering information on each title. Title and illustrator indexes provide additional access to each volume. This latest supplement describes 2,451 books on 769 topics. The titles were all published between 2005 and 2007. By combining this volume with the seventh edition, users can peruse the content of more than 30,000 recent titles on nearly 1,400 subjects. The result is a wonderful guide to encouraging children to use books and explore the world around them.