The New York Times Parent's Guide to the Best Books for Children: 3rd Edition Revised and Updated (New York Times Parent's Guide to the Best Books for Children)

The author renders a valuable service in examining multiple editions of popular books, for example you might find that one particular treatment of the Mother Goose tales is rather musical and illustrated with pen and ink drawings, while another is more colorfully animated and textually simplified for very young readers.

Unless you really know children's literature, a book like this is an invaluable tool. Similar but more directed resources are Great Books for Boys and Great Books for Girls by Kathleen Odean, which is organized into reading levels and then genre, and includes age level but not page count. Jim Trelease's The Read-Aloud Handbook is a very good, somewhat evangelical, resource organized by genre with age level and page count included in the description.

This book may have been updated, but I don't know about the "revised" part. I was disappointed to find that this edition contained the same and similar inaccuracies as the prior editions. For example, _Weetzie Bat_ is a wonderful book. But its sequels are, in order, _Witch Baby_, _Cherokee Bat and the Goat *Guys*_ (not Boys!), _Missing Angel Juan_, and _Baby Be-bop_. I expect better things from the New York Times children's book editor--not sloppy errors.

I'm glad this book exists, and it does contain much valuable information, and it is well-organized. But perfect it is not.

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   Written on January 24, 2001
   Summary: New entries, expanded descriptions
Parents' Guide to the Best Books for Children appears in its third revised, updated edition to provide the hundreds of new entries, expanded descriptions, and notes on related recommended children's books. Parents will find the organization by reading level lends to quick and easy consultation, while the indexes make it easy to match child to book subject.

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   Written on December 3, 1997
   Summary: Great! Exactly whatI was looking for!
This book was exactly what I was looking for to find new books to read aloud to my children. It reminded me of books that I had read as a child, and suggested new ones that we have loved. In addition, I have a lot of new ideas for presents for my neices and nephews.