So many of our goals in the library include providing our students with a diverse enough collection of books that, at any time when they browse the shelf they are able to find something they can connect with. Movements like #WeNeedDiverseBooks and #OwnVoices provide guidelines for us to use as we, the library, look to give our student an authentic experience.
What I know and understand is the importance of having a diverse collection. I can recall the first book that I truly connected with was a Toni Morrison book called The Bluest Eye… it was my sophomore year of college and after reading it I wondering what took me so long to find her? The books required of us at the high school level included very little (if any) diverse characters. (The only black character I remember reading about was Tom Robinson in To Kill a Mockingbird.) This lack of diverse materials, prolonged connections for me. Reading more Morrison lead to an appreciation of Angelou, which lead to a rediscovery of poetry (and not Shakespeares’ sonnets) and the beauty of slam poetry, which lead to reading more books in verse.
What I want to know is how can we make this happen for our students? The library, being a voluntary place for many (especially at the high school level), tends to focus more on technology and research. And while reading in those areas (especially research) is a skill staff of the library can work with students on, what I’m more interested in is getting students excited about reading outside of the classroom. I feel it’s a skill that many can use to help them in other classes. It’s the idea of rediscovery, how can you make what you’re learning about in your core classes, fit your interests? (Or what are you interests if you don’t already know?)
What kind of connections do students really make when reading books that feature characters of similar backgrounds/genders/race/etc., is there anything we can do to help them make those connections and encourage deeper thinking?
Rusch-Currins 545 
Kelsy,
I love this post so much! I think I have always had an interest in wanting to know why libraries choose the books they do and how they come across which book they choose. It always amazes me when I come across great finds! Something we have in common is how do we achieve in providing a diverse selection of books for our students, considering the growing technology world? Can’t wait to learn more about your disciplinary inquiry!
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There’s so much to be applauded in this inquiry project. We’re in the midst of a second golden age of children’s and young adult literature, with more books being written by authors of color (though there is still a lot of room to improve!), and your inquiry into how to best create a diverse collection is going to be a super interesting project.
One of the things I’m personally trying to think about is how librarians and teachers need to have a certain amount of resilience as they build these collections. In other words, what might some of the strategies be for librarians and educators can utilize when faced with stakeholders and community members for whom a diverse collection is unacceptable. Just something to possibly bring into your inquiry: how do we deal with censorship when it rears its ugly head as we try to build these diverse collections?
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