 Great books for kids Let the University of Illinois guide you to the best children’s books 
 One of the many lively Illustrations from the book The Chicken of the Family by Mary Amato.
Even in an age dominated by iPods and other “must-have” electronic gizmos du jour, everyone loves buying children’s books during the holidays. But beyond the tried and true classics (The Little Engine that Could, Harry Potter, anything by Dr. Seuss), what else is out there? Whether you’re looking for a picture book, an age-appropriate nonfiction title or a page-turning thriller, let the 2008 edition of the Guide Book to Gift Books, now available as a downloadable PDF file, be your book-buying guide. Published to coincide with the winter gift-giving season, the 25-page annual guide is produced by Deborah Stevenson, the editor of the Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books, which reviews children’s books for librarians and educators, at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is a professor in the Graduate School of Library and Information Science.
The guide provides short descriptions of more than 300 of the best and most recent books published in four age groups: picture books for infants, toddlers and preschoolers; books for primary-grade readers (6- to 8-year-olds); books for middle-grade readers (9- to 11-year-olds); and young adult titles (12- to 18-yearolds).
Stevenson and her colleagues compiled the guide from their full book reviews of the past year, adding more than 100 new books to the 2008 edition.
 Among Stevenson’s favorite books for 2008: For pre-schoolers: “I like Beep Beep and Choo Choo, by Petr Horácek, which are two board books about a car trip and a train ride, respectively. Both make clever use of design: Beep Beep has die-cut holes for the windows of a house and Choo Choo uses them to form the entrance and exit of a tunnel.”
For picturebook lovers: “I really like The Chicken of the Family, by Mary Amato, for its lively, absurd story and illustrations.”
For middle-school readers: “Rachel Vail’s Lucky is a story that’s very topical given the current economic conditions. It’s about a teenage girl whose mother loses her job, and the
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