Site of the Month-Children's Literature Navigator

www.geocities.com/childlitnavigator

SLJ is stretching the scope of "Site of the Month" a little by doing two things we usually don't do. The first is profiling a Geocities site. Geocities sites aren't known for either stability or permanence, but we were sufficiently impressed by the work Denise Matulka (dimatulka@alltel.net) did to make an exception. We also want to include Matulka's other site, Picturing Books at www.geocities.com/dimatulka.

A True Enthusiast: Matulka, a library school student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, is a true children's book enthusiast, and she especially loves picture books. She started Picturing Books in November 1999 "because I couldn't find any useful Internet sites about picture books." She was looking particularly for a resource that would describe and define the various styles and media that children's illustrators use, and couldn't find one, so she created her own site, illustrated with jackets of favorite books that exemplify those styles.

Useful and Easy: While Picturing Books is the older and better-conceived of the two sites, Children's Literature Navigator, the newer site, is simply a huge directory of all the children's literature sites Matulka liked. Their wide range includes authors' and illustrators' sites (she states clearly that she includes only official author's or illustrator's sites, pages from their publisher's sites), sites about illustration, award sites, and used and rare children's book dealers' sites. She acknowledges that no matter how comprehensive it is, right now the Navigator is only a list of links. If we're lucky, she'll return to annotate those links, which would be particularly useful for those new to the subject. That said, it's still one of the most complete link collections on the topic, and a great site to browse through if you're a children's-lit enthusiast.

Future Plans: Given how good the site is, it's unfortunate that Matulka doesn't plan to become a children's librarian once she gets her degree, but instead wants to become a professor of children's literature and do research on the topic, as well as expand her Web presence. "I love kids and working with them," she says, "but I enjoy developing resources for professionals even more."