Diversity

As dwindling funds and looming budget cuts reach many of the nation’s public libraries, 12 institutions received $5,000 mini-grants to support programming in their diverse communities. ALSC recently gifted these Día Family Book Club Program awards to expand El día de los niños/El día de los libros (Día) into an ongoing yearlong celebration. The winning libraries give SLJ some insights into how they garnered the much-needed funds.

How should librarians, publishers, and authors approach diversity in children’s books? Authors Sofia Quintero and Zetta Elliott and editor Connie Hsu joined a recent panel at the NYPL, moderated by Betsy Bird, to discuss these issues and more.

Permanent Record by Leslie Stella. Amazon Children’s Publishing. 2013. Reviewed from ARC from publisher. The Plot: Bud Hess is starting a new school: Magnificat Academy. The official story is to give him a better education than he was getting in public school. The real story is a bit more complicated. It has to do with [...]

Boy, I love it when I set up a Literary Salon months in advance and then the universe conspires to make it even more timely than I’d initially intended.  Expect this next one at the main branch of NYPL to feature one hot and toasty little panel talk.  I shall mentally prepare in the interim. [...]

SLJ has compiled a list of tools for locating books and program ideas for not only Spanish-speaking patrons, but for all of those interested in reading more diverse titles.

Check out the latest News Bites for information on the National Coalition Against Censorship's FIlm Contest, books for GLBTQ Youth, and the latest ebook news.

Librarians who serve children in predominantly Latino communities were shocked this past December to read a New York Times article claiming that there is a dearth of Latino characters in books written for young readers—a notion that is at odds with their own experiences. In fact, they tell School Library Journal, there is actually a wealth of resources currently available to these kids, and librarians have the power (and the responsibility) to make those meaningful connections.

As a librarian, I love it when I find books that relate to one another in terms of themes or content, which gets me thinking about potential program ideas. The titles selected for this first column of the new year are full of such connections. Starting with the idea of focusing on longer fiction, I found two semiautobiographical novels in verse, and both are historical fiction that deal with the protagonist coming of age.