Students seeing themselves on our shelves

Librarians are advocates for literacy and school librarians have the privilege of contributing to the development of a reading culture within their schools. Literature is part of a young person’s personal development and books can offer children windows, mirrors and glass sliding doors to their world (Sims Bishop, 1990). The window allows the child to see into another world, the mirror provides the child with a reflection of themselves and the sliding glass door invites them to experience the world portrayed in the book by entering into the story. If the child is reading books where the characters are nothing like themselves or their family or friends that leads to a distortion – also if the child is only reading books that mirror themselves there is a different kind of distortion. Rudine Sims Bishop explains it very clearly in the short video clip below.

Author Grace Lin further describes her own experience of windows and mirrors in her TED talk of the same name – see below for the video.

I attended a number of workshops at this IASL conference that related to this concept of students seeing themselves and seeing the worlds of others. The first was about the development of indigenous student’s literature and was presented by Kasey Garrison, Pat Carmichael and Katy Manck. There is a real need for students to read about their own ‘lived experiences’ and from authentic voices that shared some of the same kinds of lived experiences.

Nancy Larrick’s study published in 1965 found that “of the 5,206 children’s trade books launched by the sixty-three publishers in the three-year period [1962,1963,1964], only 349 include one or more Negroes–an average of 6.7 percent”  (Larrick, 1965, p. 64). Almost 50 years later a study by the Almost 50 years later, in 2013, a similar study by the Cooperative Children’s Book Center at the University of Wisconsin which looked at 3,200 children’s books published in 2013, just 93 were about black people (that is less than 3%).  Only 68 were written by African-Americans 2% of the books published (Troy, 2014). No progress had been made. Where are the mirrors for the African-American children?

The IASL has special interest groups (SIGs) – and a group that has sprung up within the Children and YA literature  Sig is this group to explore and support one another in collection development of indigenous student’s literature. For our library at IICS that would mean further developing the Mother Tongue collection and ensuring that our English language collections have books written by indigenous writers from the countries and communities, our students are part of.  I have become a member of this SIG.

Some Twitter hashtags to follow on this  topic of finding authentic voices include #ownvoices #wndb (we need diverse books) and #notyourprincess

I also attended a workshop by Mary Ann Harlan – “Girls intext: Information of Girlhood in YA literature.”  Mary Ann spoke about the way young adult literature was written by adults and promoted by adults but questioned whether or not it was providing a realistic window or mirror for our teenage girls. She identified three main girlhood narratives appearing in YA literature: Sad girls, girls in crisis; Mean and bad girls; Can do and or smart girls, the nice girls. She explored post-2014 used best sellers, book award winners and lists of feminist YA novels. She asked the question of the books Who is the girl? What is the representation of girlhood presented? She gave many examples and while she was talking about each book in detail I was imagining this topic being explored by some of the senior girls writing their extended essays. 

Karen Van Drie presented a workshop about global literature in libraries a group of librarians, translators, publishers, and literature advocates whose goal is to raise the visibility of international literature in libraries. Essential to the IB librarian who is working to develop international mindedness in their collection.

As readers, we need windows, mirrors and sliding doors. As librarians, we need to ensure our collections provides all three for our students.

References

Cooperative Children’s Book Center School of Education, University of Wisconsin-Madison. (n.d.). Publishing Statistics on Children’s Books about People of Color and First/Native Nations and by People of Color and First/Native Nations Authors and Illustrators. Retrieved May 10, 2018, from http://ccbc.education.wisc.edu/books/pcstats.asp

Larrick, N. (1965, September 11). The all-white world of children’s books. The Saturday Review, 63-65. Retrieved from http://www.unz.com/print/SaturdayRev-1965sep11-00063

Reading Rockets. (2015, January 30). Mirrors, windows and sliding doors [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AAu58SNSyc&feature=youtu.be

Sims Bishop, R. (1990). Mirrors, windows, and sliding glass doors [PDF]. Perspectives: Choosing and using books for the classroom, 6(3). Retrieved from https://scenicregional.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Mirrors-Windows-and-Sliding-Glass-Doors.pdf

TEDx Talks. (2016, March 18). The windows and mirrors of your child’s bookshelf [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wQ8wiV3FVo&t=21s

Troy. (2014, December 9). The All-White World of Children’s Books [Online forum post]. Retrieved from Black Literature website: https://aalbc.com/tc/topic/2887-the-all-white-world-of-childrens-books/

 

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