A couple months ago, I wrote a post about performative allyship as it relates to storytime—specifically, my own storytimes. I conducted a diversity audit of the books I used during storytimes at my branch and realized that I was failing as an ally and social justice advocate. I decided to make a change and resolved “to read at least one book featuring characters of color or another marginalized identity in every storytime I lead.”
Even though I broke my suitcase and got lost way more times than I’d like to admit, I made it safely back to Eugene! Last weekend was full of so many surprises—including some hard truths. Rather than delve too deeply into it all, I’m going to suggest that you take a look at my and other contributors’ guest posts on the ALSC Blog. There was so much coverage of the conference that you’ll almost feel like you were there.
Inspired by Travis Jonker’s series of posts about the highest circulating books at his school library (chapter books, picture books, nonfiction books, diverse books), here’s a list of the highest circulating juvenile fiction at my small public library branch this fiscal year. It’s a lot of the same, but it’s interesting to see a few differences.
Continue reading “Popularity & Diversity in Juvenile Fiction: A Mini Case Study”
Each year since grad school, I’ve tried to take one ALSC/YALSA e-course to keep my librarian skills sharp. This year I’m taking “Building Reflective Collections…Always Teens First” with Julie Stivers (@BespokeLib). I’ve loved the course so far, and I wanted to take a second to share a bit about what we did for one of the assignments.
I co-facilitated a training last Saturday called “Promoting Diversity and Equity Through Children’s Literature.” Representatives from Child Care Resource Network, SMART, and SOESD Early Childhood Services (where I was stationed as an AmeriCorps volunteer 2015-2016) developed this training last June. This was our second time presenting it in Medford, OR. I can’t share everything we talked about, but I’m happy to share my part—which mostly consisted of booktalking some of my favorite diverse reads for the 0-6 audience.
Continue reading “Promoting Diversity & Equity Through Children’s Literature”
The Stories Guy 