The de Grummond Children's Literature Collection Website

Reviewed By: Janet Powell

The de Grummond Children's Literature Collection Website

The de Grummond Children's Literature Collection Website is a wonderful resource for teachers, librarians and researchers. The de Grummond children's literature collection was started in 1966 as a compiling and collecting of children's literature, illustrations and sketchbooks. Dr. Lena de Grummond began this collection when she came to the University of Southern Mississippi to teach children's literature. The de Grummond Children's Literature Collection is located in the McCain Library and Archives and is part of the Special Collections at The University of Southern Mississippi.

The physical collection has over 70,000 books and illustrations from many artists. The website offers a multitude of resources. The Index of this site provides an excellent overview of the resources. They have a database of stories that are variations on the Cinderella theme. There are also other titles including Little Red Riding Hood and Jack and the Beanstalk. The de Grummond website has a Virtual Showcase where they highlight biographies, author's works and illustrations. Another section that is informative is the Authors and Illustrators on the Web. This page provides an alphabetized list of prominent authors and their websites. In addition, The Children's Literature Web Guide has 37 websites to research.

In addition, another notable section in this site is the Black Experience in Children's Literature. It can be found by looking in the Index and includes an excellent discussion of the portrayal of African-Americans in children's literature.

This website appears very current and well maintained. The last update was May 15, 2002. Contact sources provide an e-mail address, phone number and physical address. They make their online catalog available to everyone.