Great Books For Girls

Kathleen Odean has been a children's librarian for fifteen years, first in California and now at Moses Brown School, a Friends school in Providence, Rhode Island.  She grew up in White Bear Lake, Minnesota, and graduated from Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota.  Odean then lived in Berkeley, California for eight years, where she earned a Master's of Library and Information Science as well as an M.A. in Folklore at University of California.Her peers across the country recognize Odean as an expert in children's literature.  She was recently elected to the Caldecott Award Committee by her fellow children's librarians and was also a member of the 1991 Newbery Award Committee.  From 1991 through 1993, she served on the Notable Children's Book Committee of the American Library Association, a national committee of nine which evaluates all of the year's children's books.  Odean has also been a reviewer of children's books for School Library Journal since 1985.The author of the groundbreaking work Great Books for Girls: More Than 600 Books to Inspire Today's Girls and Tomorrow's Women (Ballantine Books, 1997) and High Steppers, Fallen Angels, and Lollipops: Wall Street Slang (Henry Holt Owl Paperbacks, 1989) on the folklore and slang of the stock market, Odean has also done some free-lance writing.Odean has been talking about the importance of books in children's lives on NBC-TV's Today and with newspapers, local television and radio shows across the country. She lives in Barrington, Rhode Island, with her husband, Ross Cheit, a professor at Brown University.