Picture Book City at Manitowoc Public Library

Submitted by Susie Menk, Youth Librarian and Julia Lee, Youth Services Manager

Picture books are one of the most used collections in the Children’s Department of the Manitowoc Public Library. For years we have kept these books on the shelves in order by the author’s last name, but we are excited to announce a change that is coming! 

Our picture book collection is getting a facelift. A growing number of picture books are grouped by colored stickers, and whole chunks of the collection are missing at a time. What is happening to all those beloved picture books?! We are slowly working through the collection to create a whole new Picture Book City, complete with unique neighborhoods. In each of our new eight neighborhoods live books with different themes: Me, Concepts, Culture, Favorites, Imagine, Nature, Play, and Vroom.

Each Neighborhood is comprised of special streets. For example, the Me neighborhood is made up of streets with books about specific themes like Bedtime, Birthdays, Bullying, Friends, Family, Pets, Potty training, and more! In the Imagine neighborhood, you will find a very popular street named Royalty. This is the street you will find all the princess books living! Imagine also has streets like Monster, Folk/Fairy Tales, Dinosaurs, Pirates, and Fantasy! Books for the holiday season? We have a Holiday neighborhood with favorite seasonal stories!

We are slowly reorganizing our picture book collection by topics and categories first and then by author.  We are hoping this will make finding books easier for adults and children alike! All the dinosaur books will be in the same place! Looking for princess books? They’ll be all in one spot as well! Now, when a child comes in looking for truck books, we can point the family to one specific neighborhood and let them browse ALL of the truck books we have at once!

Our hope is that Picture Book City will help families find more of the books they want to read with their children. Our goal is to have the construction of Picture Book City completed before the end of 2019.