The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books

Current Bulletin Reviewers

• Deborah Stevenson, Editor (DS)
  Deborah Stevenson has been with The Bulletin since 1989 and has held the position of Editor since 2001. She holds a PhD in English from the University of Chicago, where she wrote her dissertation on children's literature and contemporary culture. She has taught children's literature at Indiana University Northwest and in the continuing education program at the University of Chicago, and she now teaches as an Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois. Her articles have appeared in the Horn Book Magazine, The Lion and the Unicorn, and the Children's Literature Association Quarterly, and she is a senior editor of the Oxford Encyclopedia of Children's Literature. She is also the co-author, with Betsy Hearne, of Choosing Books for Children: A Commonsense Guide.


• Elizabeth Bush, Reviewer (EB)
  Elizabeth Bush has received a BA degree from Roosevelt University, a MA degree from Governors State University, and a MLS degree from Rosary College. She has been a librarian within Archdiocese of Chicago for over 16 years and currently works as a school librarian at St. Damian School (K-8) in Oak Forest, Illinois. After reviewing for Booklist she came to the Bulletin, where she has been a reviewer for ten years. She has also taught at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and she has served as a judge for the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for Excellence in Children's Literature.


• Karen Coats, Reviewer (KC)
  Karen Coats is an Associate Professor in the English Department at Illinois State University. She holds a PhD in Human Sciences from The George Washington University, where she studied critical and cultural theory across multiple disciplines of the humanities and social sciences, and focused her reserach on children's literature and culture. She also holds a BA and an MA in English from Virginia Tech, and she has taught English in junior high and high schools in both Virginia and North Carolina. Her articles have appeared in Children's Literature, Pedagogy, Children's Literature Association Quarterly, Bookbird, and Paradoxa, and she is the author of a book from the University of Iowa Press entitled Looking Glasses and Neverlands: Lacan, Desire, and Subjectivity in Children's Literature.


• April Spisak, Reviewer (AS)
  April Spisak received her master's degree in Library and Information Science from the University of Illinois, winning the 2002 Alice Lohrer Award for Literature and Library Services. She has worked as a youth services librarian at Clark County Public Library, and she is currently a doctoral student at GSLIS.


• Jeannette Hulick (JH)
  Jeannette Hulick was an elementary school teacher at Countryside School in Champaign, IL for four years before coming to GSLIS. She received her MS from GSLIS in 2001, was an editorial assistant for the Bulletin, and received the 2001 Alice Lohrer Award for Literature and Library Services. Since then she has been a busy stay-at-home mother to Elizabeth, age 5, a summer school teacher at Countryside, and an occasional storytime leader at Tolono Public Library.

Past Bulletin Reviewers

• Betsy Hearne, Professor Emerita (BH)
  Betsy Hearne retired in 2007 from her position as a professor in the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she taught children's literature and storytelling and served as Director of the Center for Children's Books. She is the author of numerous articles and books, including Choosing Books for Children: A Commonsense Guide, the folktale anthology Beauties and Beasts, several novels for children (most recently, The Canine Connection and Hauntings), and two picture books, one of which, Seven Brave Women, won the 1998 Jane Addams Children's Book Award. The former children's book editor of Booklist and of the Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, she has reviewed books for thirty years and contributes regularly to the New York Times Book Review. Hearne received a University Scholar Award in 2000 and was elected president of USBBY, the United States chapter of the International Board on Books for Young People, for the following year.


• Loretta Gaffney, Reviewer (LG)
  Loretta Gaffney received her master's degree in Library and Information Science from the University of Illinois. Previously working as a librarian at the University of Chicago Laboratory School and teaching classes at GSLIS, she is currently a doctoral student at GSLIS.


• Maggie Hommel, Reviewer (MH)
  A former editorial assistant at the Bulletin, Maggie Hommel received her master's degree in Library and Information Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in May of 2006, winning the 2006 Herbert Goldhor Award for Public Librarianship. Prior to entering the program, she was a contributing editor at Cricket magazine.  She is currently the Young Adult Librarian at Park Ridge Public Library in Illinois.
  


• Hope Morrison, Reviewer (HM)
  A former editorial assistant at the Bulletin, Hope Morrison received her master's degree in Library and Information Science from the University of Illinois, winning the 2005 Alice Lohrer Award for Literature and Library Services. She is the Library Information Specialist at Martin Luther King, Jr. Elementary School in Urbana, IL.


• Cindy Welch (CW)
  

Bulletin Staff

• Katrina Bromann is currently the Bulletin's editorial assistant. She received her master's degree in Library and Information Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in December of 2007 and is continuing her studies as a CAS student.  She intends to complete her K-12 School Library Media Specialist certification in December 2008.