The Deakin Review Celebrates a Significant Milestone

Dear Readers,We have reached an important milestone now that the Deakin Review is in its third year of publication. To wit, we have published well over 200 reviews, our readership continues to grow, and we’ve been delighted to receive so many compliments about the overall quality and appeal of our online content.For the entire month of September 2013, we displayed two full-scale exhibitions of Deakin books in the Humanities and Social Sciences and Coutts Education Libraries at the University of Alberta. We relished this opportunity to show more than 100 books, accompanied by excerpts from the corresponding reviews, to the campus community, which further raised the profile of our quarterly journal. In fact, many students have since asked about opportunities to submit book reviews to our editors for consideration.As many of you know, the Deakin Review was originally conceived as an in-house publication that would publish content from our own librarians and support staff, but we now believe that this is a good time to expand our pool of reviewers to ensure that our journal continues to grow and thrive. So, if you are thinking of submitting a review, please contact me by email and I’ll be pleased to review the submission process with you. Our editorial team will still be comprised of librarians from the University of Alberta Libraries—a unique point of distinction that sets us apart from other journals with similar content—but we will begin accepting well-written reviews of recently published children’s books from anyone, effective immediately.In other news, we recently decided that the Deakin Review should transition to a peer-reviewed journal within 18 months. This means that we’ll continue to publish thoughtful and well-written book reviews just as we have been doing, but in due course we’ll also include a peer-reviewed article in each issue about practitioner, cultural, or social issues relating to children’s books (e.g., how children’s books are used in the classroom; readers’ advisory services offered by YA librarians; language development rates for young children who use multimedia e-books). We’re looking forward to publishing excellent scholarship in these areas, so please contact our content editors if you would like to submit a paper for peer review and we’ll be pleased to discuss whether your paper meets the criteria for publication in our journal.It’s exciting to consider that we aspire to peer-reviewed status, which would mean that our content would be indexed by full-text scholarly databases for multidisciplinary research. Clearly, this is an ideal time to contribute to the growth and success of our journal, but rest assured that we will continue to help readers select children’s books by looking for excellence in writing, design, and illustration. Our main focus is, and always will be, to handpick the books that will appeal to children, young adults, and all those interested in children’s books.Enjoy our new issue!Best wishes,Robert DesmaraisManaging Editor