A guide to children's literature including resources at the State Library and elsewhere
Welcome to the State Library of Victoria's guide to finding children's books and doing research in children's literature.
The Library holds over 100,000 Australian and overseas children's books published between the 16th and 21st centuries. This collection is designed for use by researchers and is not available for browsing. A separate children's browsing collection can be found in the Pauline Gandel Children's Quarter.
Use the tabs across the top of the page to find reviews of children's books or to research specific themes.
To search for children's books, enter your keywords in the Search box on any page of the website. For example if you want children's books about ducks enter 'ducks' into the box and click Search.
To refine your results use the refine results options. For example this search uses genres
If you want the earliest published children's books about ducks use the Sort by drop-down menu and select oldest date.
Repeat these steps each time you search a different keyword or subject.
On YouTube there is a short overview of the scope of the Children's Research Collection by Juliet O'Conor, the Library's former Children's Research Librarian.
Some thematic exhibitions based on the Children's Literature Collection include:
Literary Studies Intern (2015) from Deakin University, Stephanie Walden, created the Graphic Novels page in this guide.
Krisha Leione, industry placement Masters student in Information and Library Studies, Charles Sturt University researched Indigenous Voice in Australian children's literature, see the Aboriginality page of this guide.
RMIT School of Business IT and Logistics, Master of Information Management students contributed assessable project research for the following pages:
Aboriginality- Caroline Beatty
Fables- Vania Oey
LGBTI- Caitlin Viney
Science Fiction- Nikki Archdall
