Opera and Children’s Literature: A Comprehensive Bibliography from 1895 to 2015

This article discusses the findings resulting from the creation of a comprehensive bibliography of English Language children’s opera books published from 1895 to 2015. Historically opera was often assumed to be an elitist art in the United States and was thus seldom discussed in library collection development literature, and equally rarely highlighted in children’s literature periodicals. This paper, supported by a Carnegie Whitney grant from the American Library Association, investigated the impact of opera themed children’s books by compiling a bibliography which documented instances of opera in published English Language children’s literature over 125 years. By analyzing what was published, this article discusses library collections and the cultural appreciation of opera in the United States. It finds that opera has been and continues to be a significant subject in children’s literature, and provides new insights about opera’s presence and impact in America’s libraries.