Children's Lit West

Newbery Award-winning author Karen Cushman recently helped inaugurate a major children's literature collection at California State University-Fresno. The Arne J. Nixon Center for the Study of Children's Literature opened April 30, after a celebration at which Cushman, a keynote speaker, described children's books as "books that children actually read and loved." Collections like the Nixon Center's protect "another bit of our heritage, letting us trace the development of children's literature through time." The Nixon Center is named for its chief benefactor, a former professor of children's literature and storytelling at the university. In 1995, Nixon established the center with a donation of roughly 22,000 volumes to the Henry Madden Library. When he died, in 1997, he left $1 million to carry on the center's work.