Juvenile (K-12) Collection: Welcome!

The Juvenile Collection is located on the north side of Level 3.  The Family Reading Room is located immediately to the west.  There are about 53,200 titles and 58,000 volumes, arranged using the Dewey Decimal Classification system, with call numbers running from 001 (at the west end) through 999 (at the east end).  We use the number 372.412 for children's picture books.  At that number you will find over 12,300 picture books, in alphabetical order by author.  The Juvenile Collection has books for a wide variety of ages, from beginning readers through young adults (high school and beyond), fiction and non-fiction alike.  If you don't find what you're looking for, please contact Robert Behra or use the Suggest a Purchase form.

Information on using the library's catalog can be found in the Usearch guide.  One useful way for finding children's and young-adult titles in the catalog is the Collection facet, on the right side of the screen when looking at search results in the catalog -- clicking on Juvenile Collection will restrict the display to items in that collection.  While this should work for most of the titles intended for children, it won't necessarily work for titles intended for young adults, some of which may be in the general collection.

Another approach is to search by subject.  Useful headings include Children's literature (for "collections of works published for children, including literary works, nonliterary works, or both") and the corresponding subheading Juvenile literature used under other subjects (places, people, organizations, groups, topical headings), Children's plays (and the subheading Juvenile drama), Children's stories (and the subjeading Juvenile fiction), and Children's poetry (and the subheading Juvenile poetry).  Others include Children's books (for "works on books for children considered as physical objects") and Children--Books and reading (for "works on the reading interests of children or books recommended for children").  The corresponding headings for young adults are Young adult literature, Young adult drama, Young adult fiction, Young adult poetry and Young adults--Books and reading.

To find foreign-language materials in the Juvenile Collection do a subject search for "French language materials" ("Spanish language materials", "German language materials", "Chinese language materials", etc.), and once the results are displayed use the Collection facet to restrict the results to the Juvenile Collection.

If you prefer to browse the shelves rather than use the catalog, it helps to have a call number to get started.  In the Juvenile Collection, fiction for younger children, usually heavily illustrated, is generally found at 372.412, in alphabetical order by author and not broken down by the nationality of the author or the language of the book.  This is the largest section in the collection.  Other extensive sections are 813.54 (fiction for older children by American authors from the second half of the 20th century, the second largest part of our collection, with about 9400 titles; works by the most recent American authors are at 813.6), 823.914 (fiction for older children by British authors from the second half of the 20th century; most recent works at 823.92), and 921 (individual biographies, in alphabetical order by subject).  Cartoons, comic books and graphic novels can be found between 741.5 and 741.6, while books on dinosaurs can be found between 567.9 and 568.2.  There are basic guides to the Dewey Decimal Classification on the ends of the shelving ranges in the Juvenile Collection.

In the Library of Congress Classification, used for most of the rest of the library's materials, some children's books can be found between PZ5 and PZ90, in the regular collection (east side of Level 1; includes a number of titles in Yiddish, Arabic and Hebrew).  The call numbers corresponding to the subject heading Children--Books and reading are Z1037 and Z1038 (south end of Level 1), and you can find works on library service to children between Z718.1 and Z718.3.  Books about juvenile literature can be found between PN1008.2 and PN1009.5 and at PN3443, while books about writing children's books can be found at PN147.5 (all of these in compact shelving on the east side of Level 1).

If you're looking for children's books that can be read online, try the following:

Phone: 801-581-6273
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