Primary Genreflecting

What sets this guide apart from others of its kind is its ease of use. The subject headings are well defined, and each annotation is detailed in its description of theme. When answering a reference question, busy librarians may have difficulty with the long lists of books in Carolyn W. Lima and Rebecca L. Thomas's A to Zoo (2010), and the subject headings in Catherine Barr and John T. Gillespie's Best Books for Children (2010, both Libraries Unlimited) are very broad, making the use of an index necessary to narrow the subject and therefore a time-consuming task of flipping back and forth. While not as comprehensive as those two titles, this volume will certainly come in handy where readers' advisory services are necessary. Each title includes ISBN, grade level, and major awards. All titles have been published in the last 10 years. Readers can also get a quick list of titles (without annotations) in the author, title, and subject indexes, and the "Specialty Stories Index" is great for finding audience-participation stories, cumulative tales, bilingual stories, and English texts with Spanish words, to name a few. The authors have also indicated titles throughout that they thought were especially good for storytimes. One quibble: a change in the font and/or size of the subject headings would make them easier to distinguish on the page.—Renee McGrath, Nassau Library System, Uniondale, NY