Today's presentation is on selecting diverse books and throughout this presentation we'll look at different criteria for selection and how to consider various elements to make sure that we are selecting books that authentically represent various cultures, diverse lifestyles, and lived experiences. It's so important to think about representation especially if we as a teacher live outside that culture. So if we are selecting indigenous books for our classroom, but we're not part of that culture, how do we know that those books are culturally relevant and authentic? So we'll look at some criteria to help us think about those aspects.
So authenticity and representation matters. Learning to select books that authentically represent diversity is a critical step. So learning how to do this is important and using this criteria. The books that we have in our classroom, we've talked about mirrors and windows, but the books that we have in our classroom, we want to make sure they're free of harmful stereotypes and that students, that children when they're reading them are empowered by looking at them and seeing themselves in there, but then also learning about others. It's important to choose texts that honestly reflect where you are and what you're prepared to teach, making sure that you have an understanding of the various cultures and you feel ready to include those books in your classroom and to think about how characters are represented.
That's two key questions. How are they represented and whose perspectives are included and whose are excluded? Representation, according to Grace Lin, books erase bias. They make the uncommon everyday and the mundane exotic.
A book makes all cultures universal. So we'll talk a little bit about that. This is the industry just looking at publishing.
Publishers hold all the power. They make decisions as to who gets published, what gets published, and not only that, but even if they are being published, what that story, how that story is presented, how various cultures are represented. So publishers hold a great deal of power.
And so if we look at the industry overall, race, gender orientation and disability, We see that we have a very white, cisgendered, pushing on heteronormativity, as well as able-bodied people in the industry. And so we need to have other people on the other side of the desk to make those changes. So if we think about some of the favorite books that are included in our classroom, All Moon, Fancy Nancy, When Sophie Gets Angry, Really, Really Angry, great books. But historically, white mainstream slice of life adventure universal stories.
So again, with the idea of windows and mirrors, there are a lot of children that have seen themselves extensively in books and others that have not. So let's think about this representation continuum. This is an interesting concept.
It presents four different types of books for us to think about. We have slice of life, conflict, sociopolitical and advocacy and activists running across that continuum. And so on this continuum, we have those that have positive normalizing representations of diverse life to those that actively address issues of social justice and social action for underrepresented people.
So we go from representing a day in the life all the way to trying to challenge inequities in our society. In this PowerPoint, in the shell, there's a handout for you. And we're going to go through each one of these.
Let's start with Slice of Life, picture books that normalize diverse life experiences. Here's for three examples. Layla's Happiness, which is also an Ezra Jack Keats winner and Granddad's Camper.
Layla's Happiness is a book that is about what makes her happy and her diversity is not in the spotlight. It is celebrated. Her culture, her community, her neighborhood and her family are all in the spotlight and going through a day in the life of what makes her happy. Absolutely love that book.
I highly recommend it. Granddad's Camper is about a man who has lost his partner. His partner has died and his granddaughter has come to cheer him up.
And you can see lots of. small, subtle nods towards pride and LGBTQ community. But it is about their relationship and trying to bring happiness back to him, not about.
his sexuality and then this uh being home um is a beautiful new book that came out about um a mother and a daughter who are Cherokee and they're living in the city and it's just not about their rhythm and so they want to move back um to the reservation and so they're very excited and the whole story is about them moving back being back with their family where they belong and where their rhythm matches who they are so these are slice of life stories um they depict every day you The diversity is not the focus. Normalizing stories, which someday we won't even say the word normalizing. When we say children's literature, we will have a wide variety of books to consider. And these are published about universal themes. These are topics that everyone experiences.
But now we have diverse characters that are also experiencing those things instead of white middle class girls and boys. And one thing that... notice this week is take a look at your end pages. In these slice of life stories, because there isn't a dramatic change in a character, there are conflicts.
We often see the same end pages. So take a look at how they're framed. Granddad's Camper does have different end pages, but it's not about the changes about his outlook on life.
And then we have picture books that present diversity as a conflict. So We have lots and lots of these books out there at the moment. We want to be careful with these books in our classroom.
For example, I love my curly hair. When I was a little girl, I absolutely loved my curly hair. I had no idea until I got older that people might pick on me because of it.
I still don't understand why. But that book introduced, if somebody had read that to me, I wouldn't have known that there was a problem. So in our younger grades, we want to be careful about all the books.
are out there about conflicts, people picking on each other for names or different things, that if they're introduced, we want to be careful that we haven't introduced the problem when children didn't even know that it existed. However, we live in a real world, so there are lots of books out there where students can look at this conflict about what makes them different and how they handle it. And so here we have What Happened to You, which is a young boy who's missing a leg.
We have Big, which is the young girl who is picked on for her size. And then I Love My Curly Hair, which is where a little girl is picked on because of her curly hair. And so there's lots of different books where the conflict, the diversity, what makes the character different in our society is the central focus.
And we have a lot of acts of othering in these books. Characters experience marginalization, discrimination. Usually there's some type of inequity. And we also have a secondary character where teachers or another adult can recognize their brilliance. And so these are really interesting.
And this is a place where illustrators use the gutter often to separate the characters from kind of a mob mentality. And a singular one. We'll see that.
And where are you from? As well as what happened to you and big. They're separated by the gutter from people that are picking on them, if you will, the bullies. And then our next one is picture books that present sociopolitical statements.
These are books where authors and illustrators are cultural insiders. And they have an overt political or social statement that they want to make through the narrative, whether it's through the text or the illustrations. Careful. The authors and illustrators of these books work very closely together to put forth their their message.
They often address and include systems and structures of power. They talk about inequities, perpetuate oppression, privilege or marginalization and take on those those issues. They bring to light historical and contemporary injustices as well.
So we are water protectors is a powerful example. of a young girl who is fighting the pipeline going through her indigenous land. The other side is a very powerful story about children crossing the border by themselves and the risks that it takes.
So both of these take on political statements. And then there's another type where there's actually activism that comes in where they're very, very similar to sociopolitical, but they actually have a call to action. And that's the only thing that changed. differentiates them. The type of book Where you would place the book on a continuum depends on the reader, your purposes for reading and how you might look at it.
So think about voices in the park. I would put that on a social commentary on class or sociopolitical. Someone else might put voices in the park in a slice of life about two children in the park that day. So there are different ways of looking at it and different ways of considering where these books. So using this in your classroom and having your students.
kind of defend and provide a rationale as to where they belong is fascinating. And they really do need to understand how the books work. Another kind is postmodern picture books with subversion. So subversion, we address these.
It's literature that challenges societal norms. They break with tradition. Not only is the story breaking from tradition, but so are the formats of the books breaking with tradition. Authors and illustrators use the freedom afforded in these narratives. narratives to explore ideas that might be unpopular or unconventional.
And they actually break the rules. So children love reading these because they get to break the rules without actually doing it because characters is doing it for them. And then there's metafictive elements as well, chaos, nonlinear text structures, things like that. And having characters refer to themselves as characters. So this week, what I want you to do, think back.
to last week and think about the books this week as well. Where would you put them on the continuum and do you have a balance of them? Most likely you will be looking at slice of life, conflict books, as well as socio-political. So think about where that where they might fit and then consider the differences across them.
So in an author study or in a themed tech set or in a final project. Think about the collection of books and think about how they might be different based on the types of books that they are.