Recommended Books
Twelve of Our Favorite Picture Books
Suggestions for Sharing Picture Books with Young Children
Suggestions for Sharing Picture Books with Young Children (PDF)
Picture Books of Distinction Series
Higher and Higher: Picture Books of Distinction in 2009 (PDF)
Eating Up the World: Picture Books of Distinction in 2008
Strange Bedfellows: Picture Books of Distinction in 2007
An Adventure Begins: Picture Books of Distinction in 2006
Transformations in Style and Content: Picture Books of Distinction in 2005
Lost and Found: Picture Books of Distinction in 2004
In the Beginning…Was the Picture: Picture Books of Distinction in 2003
Varieties of Gazelle: Marvelous Picture Books of 2002
This Land is Your Land: Selected Best Children's Picture Books for 2001
BERL Book Review
Barbara Elleman Research Library
Barbara Elleman is the creator and former editor-in-chief of the American Library Association’s Book List Magazine, has been a friend of the Museum since before its opening in 2002, and has served as a Trustee from 2004 through 2009. Together with her husband, Don, Barbara has donated to the Museum a 700-volume treasure trove of books on children’s literature, The Barbara Elleman Research Library (BERL), which was amassed over the course of Barbara’s thirty year association with the field. The collection includes subjects ranging from the history of children's books (Jane Bingham's Fifteen Centuries of Children's Literature), to explorations of the art of the picture book (Perry Nodelman's Words about Pictures and Henry Pitz's Illustrating Children's Books), and biographies on A.A. Milne, Laurent deBrunhoff, William Steig, Jessie Wilcox Smith, Ezra Jack Keats, Wanda Gág, Leonard Everett Fisher, and Virginia Lee Burton. The non-circulating research library has been cataloged and is available by appointment to scholars visiting the Museum.
For further information or to make an appointment please contact Megan at (413) 658-1123 or at meganl@carlemuseum.org.
For a taste of what the collection offers, we’ve asked Barbara to provide us with highlights.
Click here for Book Reviews of our BERL Collection.