ALA: Find recommended booklists for children at the Association for Library Services for Children, a sister site of the ALA. Both are super-large informational sites with awkward interfaces. Highlights include excellent information about children and the Internet,  Children's Notable Lists, and a dense collection of websites suitable for children, (although this is not frequently updated).

Autism Teaching Tools: Lovely, small collection of recommended books for children with autism! A rare find.

Best History Sites: An essential site for any teacher or librarian, with over 1,000 fascinating, informative, useful, annotated links.

Black Books Galore: Excellent independent reviewer. Lists of  books for African-American children. Positive, affirming in outlook.

Carol Hurst: This long-time site is being carried on by Carol's daughter, Rebecca Otis. Many teacher resources, bibliographies, book reviews. Dense site.

Educator's Reference Desk:  Nonprofit site with just about EVERYTHING any teacher of anything at any grade level could possibly need! Heavily studded with free lesson plans. Information on classroom management, standards, etc. Beautiful! 

ERIC:  Education Resources Information Center. Definitely for the scholarly-minded! Contains massive archives of "education literature" and a powerful search function.

Education Atlas:  A commercial site but it contains handy, attractive lists of links to online sites with free teaching resources, some commercial, some not.

The deGrummond Children's Literature Collection:  Focus on classic books. Collected works of Ezra Keats and others. Awkward, confusing interface. Search here. A resource for writers/illustrators of children's literature who are seriously interested in learning from the works of masters.

Hedgehogbooks: Unusual, small children's bookstore site. Contains teacher-tested, child-tested booklists. Amazing!

Kay Vandergrift: Her site, a rich, elegantly-written resource by a long-time expert is an excellent starting point for thoughtful consideration of many issues (including intercultural and interracial issues), in children’s literature. Contains some book reviews and book lists.

IBBY:  International Board of Books For Young People: I LOVE the "Young People" in this title which reflects a sensitivity to many cultures. Scholarly in outlook. Book lists must be purchased at low-cost and are highly recommended. Spend some time here to get an international perspective on books for young people!

IPL:  Internet Public Library. Huge site, a wonderful research resource. Contains a handy homework page for children with a focus on nonfiction, and a stellar page for teens with a graphic novels guide, a fascinating poetry wiki, a how to write a research paper, more. 

IRA: International Reading Association: A rich site with a user-friendly interface. Nice collection of free book lists here. Sister site is ReadWriteThink, with tons of resources for teachers.

The Martindale Center:  This is a .com site, but it looks more like a nonprofit site, with a focus on science Internet resources and no advertising that I could locate.  Information-packed and fun to explore! It exemplifies the type of home-grown, eccentric, eclectic website that I love to discover. You can find out how to measure almost anything, anywhere and any time, from links categorized here with an additional assortment of links on everyday science questions and topics. A truly useful resource for the classroom as well as for authors writing nonfiction!

National Child Care Information: Good collection of reputable resources and links about books for younger children and book evaluation criteria. Emphasis on children with disabilities (differently-abled children) and children with social disadvantages.

New York Public Library: Site contains a tiny, rare list of Southeast Asian picture books in English, but the Thai ones are excellent and highly recommended--particularly the two about elephants! Many other useful, interesting booklists.

Paper Tigers: This site has a focus on promotion of books on South Asian, Pacific Rim books for children, although how accurate some of its reviews are is questionable, but it does contain interesting resource lists with unusual links. 

Oyate: The most extensive listing of Native American-themed books on the Internet; however, it does not contain a complete listing. Also, the site, whose makers clearly have laudable intentions, is, sadly, severely marred by the lack of clear evaluation criteria applied evenly to all of the books reviewed and by poor scholarly work in many of the reviews here. Also evident from close examination of the site is a bias towards covering up facts about Native American history which are not always pleasant or acceptable to many modern Native Americans. This does a genuine disservice to the children and their elders whom this site has been intended to help. The site is convenient for ordering books with Native American themes, which is a plus, but users should, again, be aware that Oyate still does not represent the views of all Native American readers and/or book creators for young people. Teachers, librarians, and parents, in particular, are cautioned to research and to evaluate each book on each list themselves before using it at home or in any classroom or library. For help in formulating your own evaluation criteria for interracial, intercultural and/or ethnic books for young people, please see the superb, A World of Difference Institute, Jewish site. Compare and contrast these two sites:  Notice the large differences in levels of empathy, sensitivity, and scholarly skill between them. 

ReadWriteThink: Site contains a luxurious number of free, detailed writing/reading lesson plans (with a graphics organizers focus) which can be adapted for use in classrooms. Fascinating interactive, online web tools for students (these require free plug-ins) that even adult creators of books for children will find useful. Other helpful resources, websites, and brochures.

Seattle Public Library Teen Readers: Exemplary library site for teen readers. Interesting, rich, lively. Book lists for teens. Websites for teens. Teen book reviews, lots more. See also the booklists for children--an eclectic, unusual grouping.

Thai Bookshop:  High-quality picture books about Thailand, in Thai, are still rare. Find here a small collection of high-quality Thai picture books and Thai language workbooks for children. The picture books by Prida Panyach about life in rural Thailand are especially charming and worth buying for the pictures alone for English-speaking children!

 Waterboro Library: Beautifully organized. A long list of recommended books for children and YA with many links to more lists! Attractive focus on intercultural, interracial books here, nicely done.

A World of Difference Institute: From the ADL, a Jewish organization sensitively  reaching out to all oppressed people, comes this exemplary site on recommended "multicultural and anti-bias books for children." Contains a list of books about bullying.  Superb evaluation criteria, with much to learn in this site. Outstanding!

LEARNING DISABILITY SITES:

Visual Spatial Learning:  A specific, type of learning disability. Trends in new types of IQ testing. Commercial site though generous with free information. Has a sister site.

Davis Dyslexia Program:  Includes more about visual spatial learning. Links to other forms of dyslexia and/or learning disabilities.  Promotes a successful teaching method for dyslexics. Commercial site but useful, interesting to peruse.

Study Strategies for VS Learners:  Nonprofit site with excellent helps. Has a mind-mapping focus.

Note:  Links are updated and re-evaluated regularly, in RindaRealm.

 Well Scribed Words

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