Picture Book City brings engagement for early readers

Toddlers and preschoolers who visit their local Timberland Regional Library can find new reading adventures on their own with Picture Book City.

Picture Book City is a new collection specifically for early readers that was released in all Timberland Regional Library (TRL) branches on Sept. 1, 2021.

Rather than being categorized by author, early reader books have been broken up into subcategories based on subject and given bright, vibrant labeling, making it easier for little ones to find books on topics that they are interested in, said Muriel Wheatley, operations coordinator for Centralia Timberland Regional Library.

“The project highlights some of TRL’s early learner priorities,” Wheatley said. “By breaking these books into sub-genres, we are making them more accessible to both children and adults.”

Wheatley, who is one of the project managers, said the library sections featuring the collection have “fun, bright signage with visual indicators that show the sub-genre and make them easily identifiable to kids.”

Families browse together in the stacks, and children have been engaging more with the collection than they normally do, Wheatley said. It also works well for parents looking for books for their children with a specific topic, she said.

Picture Book City features more than 13,000 unique titles under 13 subcategories, with another category to be released soon.

Some Picture Book City categories are:

• Animals, which includes stories about pets, farm animals, birds, insects, ocean creatures, wild animals and zoos.
• Bedtime, which includes goodnight stories, stories about bedtime, stories about being sleepy, stories about dream and dreaming, and stories about nighttime.
• Community, which includes the topics of community professionals, volunteers, helpers, change-makers, and activists; stories about neighborhoods, towns, and cities; interpersonal relationships outside of the family, lessons on kindness, bullying, inclusivity and the people that make up our world.
• Emotions, which cover topics of feelings, temper tantrums, frustration, anxiety and worry, feeling scared, stories about love as a general concept and feeling love, how to manage emotions, and sharing feelings with others.

Other categories in the collection are Dinosaurs, Explore, Families, Go, Growing Up, Imagine, Learning, Seasonal, and Stories, which includes books that don’t fit easily into any of the other categories. Another category, Favorites, will be added soon and will include books that are part of popular series such as Pete the Cat, Wheatley said.

The above was provided by Timberland Regional Library.