BiblioVault - Books about Children

Language Acquisition

Jill G. de Villiers and Peter A. de Villiers

Harvard University Press, 1978

The study of language acquisition has become a center of scientific inquiry into the nature of the human mind. The result is a windfall of new information about language, about learning, and about children themselves.

In Language Acquisition Jill and Peter de Villiers provide a lively introduction to this fast-growing field. Their book deals centrally with the way the child acquires the sounds, meanings, and syntax of his language, and the way he learns to use his language to communicate with others. In discussing these issues, the de Villiers provide a clear and insightful treatment of the classic questions about language acquisition: Does the child show a genetic predisposition for speech, or grammar, or semantics which makes him uniquely able to learn human language? What kinds of learning are involved in acquiring language and what kinds of experience with a language are necessary to support such learning? Is there a critical period during the child's development which is optimal for language acquisition? And what kind of psychological disabilities underlie the failure to acquire language?

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The Last Eyewitnesses

Children of the Holocaust Speak

Wiktoria Sliwowska

Northwestern University Press, 1998

These testimonies, submitted by individual authors and not originally intended for publication, were assembled as a historical record by the Association of the Children of the Holocaust in Poland. While evil and brutal anti-Semitism are described, the accounts also reveal the great risks taken by courageous individuals in order to save Jewish children.

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The Last Eyewitnesses, Volume 2

The Children of the Holocaust Speak

Jakub Gutenbaum and Agnieszka Latala

Northwestern University Press, 2005

The memoirs of Jews who were children during the Nazi occupation of Poland

This book serves as a memorial to loved ones who do not even have a grave, as well as a tribute to those who risked their lives and families to save a Jewish child. A wide variety of experiences during the Nazi occupation of Poland are related with wrenching simplicity and candor, experiences that illustrate horrors and deprivation, but also present examples of courage and compassion.

These recollections-whether of hiding in forests or camouflaged bunkers, fighting with groups of partisans, enduring the horrors of concentration camps, or living in fear under disguised identities-serve as eloquent testimony to the depth, diversity, and richness of humanity under siege and offer a powerful lesson for future generations. Written by people who remained in Poland after the war, these accounts convey a great immediacy; the authors are not removed from the environment in which these experiences took place. The psychological impact on these child survivors and the difficulties they encountered even after the war are very poignant. The passing years have brought urgency to the publication of these stories, as those who wrote them are the last surviving eyewitnesses of these tumultuous events.

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Law Beyond the State

Pasts and Futures

Edited by Rainer Hofmann and Stefan Kadelbach

Campus Verlag, 2016

Law beyond the State brings together contributions by renowned experts on international and European Union law to celebrate the centennial of Goethe‒Universität Frankfurt. The essays explore Frankfurt’s contribution to the development of international law; the historical development of international law; how this form of law can be used as a tool to improve the world and create a better future for all; the essential relevance of the spiritual dimension of legal orders, including the European Union, to ensuring their values will be taken seriously; and the possibility, offered by the Internet, for all persons concerned with global lawmaking to participate effectively in relevant decision-making processes.

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Leading Kids to Books Through Crafts

American Library Association

American Library Association, 2000

Leading Kids to Books Through Magic

American Library Association

American Library Association, 1996

Legacy of Silence

Encounters with Children of the Third Reich

Dan Bar-On

Harvard University Press

"Let the Little Children Come to Me"

Childhood and Children in Early Christianity"

Cornelia B. Horn

Catholic University of America Press, 2009

Let’s Talk About Race in Storytimes

Jessica Anne Bratt

American Library Association, 2021

Foreword by Kirby McCurtis

With the help of this book’s adaptable storytime activities, tools for self-reflection, and discussion starters, children’s librarians will learn how to put anti-racism work into their professional practice while fostering an environment that celebrates all identities.

As the weekly lists of best-sellers demonstrate, many people want to engage with racial issues. But when it comes to talking about race, they often don’t know how or are hesitant to take the first steps. This includes children's librarians, who are taking seriously our profession’s calls for diversity, equity, and inclusion. They already know that popular storytimes can be an effective way to increase community representation and belonging at the library. Incorporating race into storytimes is an ideal way to foster inclusion by normalizing conversations about these issues. This book will help public and school librarians face their own biases, showing them how to have honest discussions with children, their caregivers, and storytime attendees, as well as their colleagues. In this book, you will discover

several ready-to-use library storytimes that incorporate racial themes, complete with sample activities and booklists;
an anti-oppression framework, based on the author’s own real-world practice, that is customizable for different settings and situations;
concrete suggestions for overcoming fears and awkwardness when it comes to talking about race, with advice on practicing new language, making space to connect around appropriate cultural books for read alouds, and evaluating books for storytime;
interactive self-reflecting worksheets which explore planning picture book introductions and songs for inclusive storytimes, providing age-appropriate glimpses into history, and suggested affirmations in describing skin tone, hair, and language;
advocacy talking points centered on social justice that will encourage discussion with co-workers and other library staff; and
guidance on community engagement, relationship building, and intentionally trying to diversify your world in order to truly become an anti-bias practitioner.

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LGBTQAI+ Books for Children and Teens

Providing a Window for All

Christina Dorr

American Library Association, 2018

Life on the Malecón

Children and Youth on the Streets of Santo Domingo

Jon M. Wolseth

Rutgers University Press, 2013

Life on the Malecón is a narrative ethnography of the lives of street children and youth living in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, and the non-governmental organizations that provide social services for them. Writing from the perspective of an anthropologist working as a street educator with a child welfare organization, Jon M. Wolseth follows the intersecting lives of children, the institutions they come into contact with, and the relationships they have with each other, their families, and organization workers.

Often socioeconomic conditions push these children to move from their homes to the streets, but sometimes they themselves may choose the allure of the perceived freedoms and opportunities that street life has to offer. What they find, instead, is violence, disease, and exploitation—the daily reality through which they learn to maneuver and survive. Wolseth describes the stresses, rewards, and failures of the organizations and educators who devote their resources to working with this population.

The portrait of Santo Domingo’s street children and youth population that emerges is of a diverse community with variations that may be partly related to skin color, gender, and class. The conditions for these youth are changing as the economy of the Dominican Republic changes. Although the children at the core of this book live and sleep on avenues and plazas and in abandoned city buildings, they are not necessarily glue- and solvent-sniffing beggars or petty thieves on the margins of society. Instead, they hold a key position in the service sector of an economy centered on tourism.

Life on the Malecón offers a window into the complex relationships children and youth construct in the course of mapping out their social environment. Using a child-centered approach, Wolseth focuses on the social lives of the children by relating the stories that they themselves tell as well as the activities he observes.

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Listening to Learn

Sharon Grover

American Library Association, 2012

Literature and the Child

Romantic Continuations, Postmodern Contestations

James Holt Mcgavran

University of Iowa Press, 1999

The Romantic myth of childhood as a transhistorical holy time of innocence and spirituality, uncorrupted by the adult world, has been subjected in recent years to increasingly serious interrogation. Was there ever really a time when mythic ideals were simple, pure, and uncomplicated? The contributors to this book contend—although in widely differing ways and not always approvingly—that our culture is indeed still pervaded, in this postmodern moment of the very late twentieth century, by the Romantic conception of childhood which first emerged two hundred years ago.

In the wake of the French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution, western Europe experienced another fin de siècle characterized by overwhelming material and institutional change and instability. By historicizing the specific political, social, and economic conflicts at work within the notion of Romantic childhood, the essayists in Literature and the Child show us how little these forces have changed over time and how enriching and empowering they can still be for children and their parents.

In the first section, “Romanticism Continued and Contested,” Alan Richardson and Mitzi Myers question the origins and ends of Romantic childhood. In “Romantic Ironies, Postmodern Texts,” Dieter Petzold, Richard Flynn, and James McGavran argue that postmodern texts for both children and adults perpetuate the Romantic complexities of childhood. Next, in “The Commerce of Children's Books,” Anne Lundin and Paula Connolly study the production and marketing of children's classics. Finally, in “Romantic Ideas in Cultural Confrontations,” William Scheick and Teya Rosenberg investigate interactions of Romantic myths with those of other cultural systems.

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Lost and Found

Locating Foundlings in the Early Modern World

Nicholas Terpstra

Harvard University Press

Florence’s foundling home of the Innocenti is often taken as a symbol of Renaissance creativity, innovation, and humanity. Its progressive approach to caring for abandoned children was matched by the iconic architectural form designed one of the period’s leading architects, Filippo Brunelleschi. Did reality match the reputation? The essays in Lost and Found explore new dimensions and contexts for foundling care at the Innocenti and use archival documents and digital tools to locate it architecturally, geographically, and socially. They ask questions that reframe the Ospedale degli Innocenti in different contexts and open paths for further research: Was Brunelleschi’s design a failure? How can digital tools recover the Innocenti’s lost spaces and extensive real estate holdings? What did the law say about foundlings and abandonment? What was it like to live in the Innocenti and in homes elsewhere? What roles did race and enslavement play in infant abandonment?

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