Below is a chart from Cullinan and Galda's Literature and the Child; it provides brief discriptions of several children and young adult literature genre's (Cullinan & Galda, p. 7). When searching for children's books in the WSU Library Catalog, just click on a category below.
| Category |
Brief Description: Genres in Children's and Young Adult Literature |
| Picture Books | Interdependence of art and text. Story of Concept presented through combination of text and illustration. Classification based on format, not genre. All genres appear in picture books. |
| Poetry & Verse | Condensed language, imagery. Distilled, rhythmic expression of imaginative thoughts and perceptions. |
| Folklore | Literary heritage of humankind. Traditional stories, myths, legends, nursery rhymes, and songs from the past. Oral tradition; no known author. |
| Fantasy | Imaginative worlds, make-believe. Stories set in places that do not exist, about people and creatures that could not exist, or events that could not happen. |
| Science Fiction | Based on extending physical laws and scientific principles to their logical outcomes. Stories about what might occur in the future. |
| Realistic Fiction | "What if" stories, illusion of reality. Events could happen in real world, characters seem real; contemporary setting. |
| Historical Fiction | Set in the past, could have happened. Story reconstructs events of past age, things that could have or did occur. |
| Biography | Plot and theme based on person's life. An account of a person's life, or part of a life history; letters, memoirs, diaries, journals, autobiographies. |
| Facts about the real world. Informational books that explain a subject or concept. |
Cullinan, B.E. and Galda, L. (1998). Cullinan and Galda’s literature and the child (p. 7). Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace College Publishers.