Monday, December 3, 2007

Limited Availability of Books

Over the past few weeks, as I have attempted to search for children's books on the topic I had chosen, I came across a problem. My chosen topic involved reading children's books about characters who have or interact with someone who has autism. While I have found several online links to books about these topics, I found that public access is severely limited. After doing catalog searches of 3 different libraries, I could only find 4-5 titles. There were only 1 copy of each, and all were checked out for up to 3 weeks. My next step was to check the local bookstore. While all titles were available for order online, none were carried in-store. Ordering these books was not an option for me, with 5 books costing almost 80 dollars.

Instead, I opted to change the focus of my project to those focusing around Down Syndrome. I read 3 books, which I will post reviews of later this week. I decided to change my project to Down Syndrome specifically, again, due to personal experiences with students and children who have had Down's. These books were slightly more available than those about autism, although the number of choices were still very small.

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