Zuckerman's Barn Kids Page

General Info

This web site focuses on children's books, particularly those of interest to 9-12 year olds. Parts of the site are highly interactive, but limited to students whose teachers include it in their classroom program. The rest of the site includes databases of book titles indexed in many different ways.

Student book reviews form a core feature of the entire site. Over the past six years, students have written more than 11,000 reviews of books they've read both in school and out. The vast majority of reviews were written spontaneously without any formal assignment, mostly from home.

Children begin to use the site in fifth grade classes, but many continue independently into sixth grade and beyond. In the six years this site has been on the internet, more than 1000 students have participated.

This year (2006-2007), participation will be expanded and a number of teachers will be able to post reviews for students who are not using the interactive part of the site. In addition, anyone may use the search pages. Virtually all of the reviews for each book will appear in the search results.

Finally, there are two sets of search categories, one based on topics that students have shown an interest in and another, more extensive set, meant for teachers, librarians and parents. Please note that this database is still a work in progress, but one we hope will be useful.