Middle & Junior High Core Collection, (16th Edition, 2023) is a guide to nearly 5,000 fiction and nonfiction books recommended for children and young adolescents, grades five through nine. This volume is designed to address the unique needs of younger adolescent readers and help school media specialists and young adult librarians locate highly recommended titles to strengthen their collection.

New & Expanded Coverage

This new edition covers thousands of titles not previously included. It provides immediate access to the Most Highly Recommended and Core Collection level titles for middle school students and teachers. In addition, particular attention has been paid to developing areas of computers, math, and the sciences.

For many years, librarians have relied on Middle & Junior High Core Collection to help build their collection and for many other important uses:

1. Purchasing & Title Selection. With easy access to ISBN and publisher information, selecting and ordering titles is quick and easy.
2. User Service & Readers’ Advisory. Every title in this Core Collection is a recommended work of its kind and can be given with confidence to a student or teacher who expresses a need based on topic or genre.
3. Curriculum Support. The indexing, annotations, and grade level designations are incredibly helpful in identifying materials for classroom use.
4. Collection Development & Maintenance. This Core Collection identifies titles that are recommended to add, or keep, in a collection. This helpful insight helps facilitate decisions to rebind, replace, or discard items.
5. Professional Development. This edition features library science titles specifically addressing collection development for this age group.

Bibliographic & Cataloging Data, Descriptions & Reviews

Individual entries provide a wealth of much-needed information at a glance.

1. Complete Bibliographic & Cataloging Data
2. ISBN and Publisher Data make purchasing titles quick and easy
3. Suggested Subject headings, Grade Level & Dewey Classification
4. Content Descriptions & Quotations from select reviews are incredibly useful when evaluating books for selection and in determining which is best suited for the individual reader.
5. Additional notes describe sequels and companion volumes, editions available, awards, and publication history.
6. Essential titles, our highest recommendation level in a subject area, are easily identified with a starred listing throughout the text. Stars have been added to the index in this edition to make finding Essential titles by author or subject easier than ever. titles

Easy-to-use Arrangement

1. Nonfiction, provides immediate access to over 3,500 nonfiction titles, arranged by Dewey Decimal Classification.
2. Biographies. Arranged by subject, this section suggests hundreds of biographies on persons of interest to children in middle and junior high.
3. Fiction, arranged by author, recommends nearly 2,400 of the best fiction for young adolescent readers. This volume includes graphic novels too!

In-depth Indexing

A highly detailed Author, Title, Series, and Subject Index provides easy navigation through the hundreds of subject areas, thousands of authors and titles, and numerous series in this informative resource. New to this edition is the inclusion of Series data in the index and the index now includes stars to indicate an Essential title. Whether searching by author, title, series, or one of the hundreds of subject areas found in the index, librarians can easily locate titles that will round out their collection.

The Middle & Junior High Core Collection is an essential resource for library and media specialists looking to enhance and enrich their collection with the most important and highly recommended titles currently available. No library media specialist should be without the helpful collection development and curriculum support guidance that this collection can provide.