There are huge numbers of internet sites devoted to some aspect or other of children's literature--although relatively few of them focus specifically on serious discussion about the issues surrounding the literature. Nevertheless, there is a range of ways in which information from a variety of kinds of sources might become useful. We'll list just a few of these here.
A good first stop is the Children's Literature Web Guide. It includes comprehensive lists of author's websites and of books that have won awards of various sorts in different countries. It also includes links to many other internet sites that relate to children's literature.
Eliza Dresang of Florida State University recommends the web site for the Cooperative Children's Book Center in Madison, Wisconsin. Eliza says:
"I refer my students to it a lot for several resources including:
Other useful collections of links include:
In addition to the Bibliography available on this site, there is one other important bibliography of early children's literature criticism online, produced by Linnea Hendrickson: Children's Literature: A Guide to the Criticism. Originally published in book form by G.K. Hall/Macmillan, 1987, this is a thorough annotated bibliography of significant articles, books, and dissertations relating to children's literature criticism. Although most of the articles cited here were originally published in 1985 or earlier, this is an indispensable resource for scholars and serious students of Children's Literature.
There are a number of sites containing some specific discussion of topics and issues in children's literature online. These include:
A number of journals devoted to various aspects of children's literature publish small parts of their contents on their web sites.
These and other journals often include listings of the articles on their web sites even when the articles are not available on-line. Consult the web pages we've listed under Journals.
For information about how to access bibliographic databases relating to children's literature and children's literature criticism, see Finding Criticism: Basic Resources elsewhere on this site.
There are a number of groups that pursue discussion of children's literature via e-mail. You might consider subscribing to one or more of these, or possibly, searching for materials on the topics that interest you in their archives. Here are the web sites containing subscription instructions and other information for some interesting ones:
Finally, there are some useful sites that provide links to resources in various areas of literary studies in general. While there's little on these pages that relates specifically to children's literature, they can be helpful in providing information about certain types of literary theory, literary history, and so on.