Standards
Editorial Policy
Last updated
Our job is to help adults choose and share books with children. That depends on accuracy, transparency and editorial independence.
Accuracy and sourcing
- Book details (title, contributors, edition, publisher, ISBN) are checked against library catalog records before a book appears on the site. See how we choose books.
- Factual claims about child development, literacy research, history or awards cite a source. Each citation states the specific claim it supports, and we prefer official and primary sources.
- We do not publish invented statistics, quotations, studies, testimonials, ratings or awards.
- We describe a book’s content in our own words. We do not claim to have “tested” books with particular children, and we do not use fictional reviewer personas.
Age guidance
Suggested ages are editorial estimates based on a book’s format, length, vocabulary and themes. They are not publisher ratings, safety assessments or rules. We flag content some families may want to know about — death, violence, racism, strong language — in a book’s reading notes.
Review status labels
Each guide shows a review label near the byline:
- Fact-checked against cited sources: the page’s factual claims were checked against the sources listed at the end of it.
- Editor reviewed: additionally read and approved by a human editor.
- AI fact-check completed · not yet human-reviewed: separate AI research and review agents re-checked the page’s factual claims, book details, awards and sources against the cited material and corrected errors. This is an automated review, not review by a human editor or subject expert.
- Awaiting additional editorial review: published with a visible note that a further review is pending.
Drafts may be prepared with the help of AI writing tools. Every published page is held to the sourcing rules above, and pages that need more human review are labelled.
Independence
No publisher, author, retailer or advertiser pays for inclusion or placement. If we ever carry affiliate or sponsored links, they will be labelled, marked with rel="sponsored", and disclosed on our affiliate disclosure page. Links to other websites appear only when they help readers; we do not exchange links.
Historical material
Archive pages about the former Bank Street Bookstore summarize documented facts with sources. They are labelled as historical records, do not reproduce the store’s or Bank Street College’s content, and never suggest that the store still operates.
Corrections
We fix errors promptly and note significant corrections on the affected page and our corrections page.