EDEL 472 Library Guide

Tips for finding children's social studies and history literature focused on marginalized groups and additional narratives

• Use more recent books, 20 years old or less
• Look for authors of color
• Look at a book's cover

Start with the CA curriculum, and then use other items to teach the bigger picture.

• Nonfiction

  • Biographies and informational texts
  • Use your keywords in OneSearch and use the "location" feature on the left to select "nonfiction"
  • Find a call number related to your subject and you should find books on your topic for all ages

• Fiction

  • Picture books, chapter books, historical fiction
  • Use your keywords in OneSearch and use the "location" feature on the left to limit to "Children's Fiction" for chapter books or "Children's Picture" for picture books

Primary Sources

Anything created at the time of the event

1. In OneSearch conduct an Advanced Keyword Search

Limit your results in the Publication Date drop down menu to your time-period

Do not limit these searches to Children's Collection, as many primary sources are in our larger collection.

2. In Databases select “History, Primary Sources”, and check (i) to find a good one for your topic, check the years covered.
   1. Newspaper and Magazine articles - Historical Los Angeles Times 1881-,
   2. Images – Artstor -Type in keywords and your time-period.  You must create an account to download images.
   3. Diaries, autobiographies, oral histories - North American Immigrant Letters, Diaries and Oral Histories
   4. Government documents – laws, decrees – History Vault

Documents and Images Archives

Free Resources

Key for when you are no longer a student here

Newspapers and Magazine Archives

There are many factors that determine the appropriate age to read a book, and it can be hard if you haven't read the book, or don't know the child. ​(Labeling books by age is a problem, since a child with lower reading skills having to select "little kid" books to find something they CAN read successfully can turn them off reading.)

Two major considerations:

• Reading DIFFICULTY
• CONTENT understanding

Recommendations from teachers or librarians who know the child and the books, are an excellent way to find appropriate books.

Publishers usually assign an age range to the books.  These are some of the designations you will see:

• Newborn to age 3 (Board Books)
• Ages 3–8 (Picture Books)
• Ages 5–9 (Early or Leveled Readers)
• Ages 6–9 or 7–10 (First Chapter Books)
• Ages 8–12 (Middle-Grade Books)
• Ages 12 and up or 14 and up (Young Adult (YA) Books)

These publisher designations can not determine both content AND difficulty, only a suggested age range to sell the book.

Web Search Tools

Scholastic's Reading Counts HMH Book Finder designates both an Interest Level and a Reading Level:

Lexile Find a Book database can determine the difficulty level, but not the content level:

Scholastic Book Wizard allows you to search by reading level systems:

Other Information: