Looking for a good book for a child? I’ve recently found two blogs that talk about children’s books: Kids Literati and Books for Kids Blog. At Kids Literati, books are reviewed by Kara, the grown-up daughter of a storyteller and children’s bookstore owner. She grew up surrounded by kids books. The reviewer at Books for Kids Blog is a retired librarian. She spent her adult life around childrens books.

I found Kids Literati a couple of months ago when I noticed they did a video review of Make a World by Ed Emberley. The review compared the first printing of the book with a recent reprinting of it. An interesting idea! More important to me, I was able to see what the inside of the book looked like. Emberley goes through a series of steps, showing how to draw different pictures. I knew right away that Emberley’s style would be perfect for my 5 year old daughter. She loves to draw and is very good at looking at pictures and drawing from them. After watching this video review, I ended up buying 2 of Emberley’s books for my daughter.

This is just one example of a review at Kids Literati. Kara has reviewed over 60 books thus far. You can tell she loves most of the books she reviews. She’s good at pointing out what’s special about them. However, her reviews aren’t sugar-coated. I noticed her review of A Series of Unfortunate Events was less than glowing. (I have to confess that I picked up the first book in this series and had a hard time getting through the first chapter. So I appreciated her candor.)

Warning: You’ll leave the site wanting to go out a buy a big stack of children’s books!

Before you do that, head on over to Books for Kids Blog and see what’s cooking over there. Generally, they review books for a wider age group of kids. The most recent posts are reviews of books for teenage boys. As you go back in time you can see there are often reviews of several books on one topic, which I think is a great idea. Some topics already featured are snow, stories about dogs, ghost stories, books about science fair projects, Valentine’s Day, and Civil War books. She even covers princesses with a list of “Princess Stories That Won’t Shrink Ze Brain.”

For anyone who has children in their lives, both of these blogs can be great tools to help pick out good books. Probably the best bet is to jot down the names of some that sound interesting and head on over to your library with the child. Then check out some books!