The Brown Bookshelf

Lee and Low: Checklist: 8 Steps to Creating a Diverse Book Collection It’s not easy to create an inclusive book collection. Whether you’re a librarian creating a collection for an entire community, a teacher creating a collection for your classroom, or a parent creating a collection for your children, choosing books that reflect the diversity of human experience can be a challenging job. That’s because creating a diverse book collection is about more than just making sure X, Y, and Z are represented. Nonfiction Monday – Rounding up the best nonfiction for children and teens Lynn: You’d have to live in a cave in the wilderness not to know that far too many Americans have a very sketchy concept of what a fact actually is or how to verify it. The need to understand this important issue is one of national importance these days as it is clear that millions of adults don’t grasp the difference and the impact on our culture is stark. Here, with a great way to start addressing the issue, is Michael Rex with a fabulous picture book, Facts vs. Opinions vs. Robots (Penguin/Nancy Paulsen, 2020).

Classroom libraries can plant the seed for a lifelong love of learning A book in a child’s hand is a gateway to learning, opening a door into other worlds. Teachers know this inherently, which is the reason many K-12 educators invest in classroom libraries, curating collections of books that students can access without ever leaving their room. This year, the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) is putting so much emphasis on building these classroom spaces that they’re devoting 35 specific sessions — and a significant chunk of their entire annual convention in Houston, Texas, this year — to an effort dubbed "Build Your Stack." “We want our students to see themselves in books and to also understand others and the world more deeply through reading books,” NCTE’s president-elect Franki Sibberson told Education Dive by email. “The classroom library should invite readers to find books they may already love and it should also invite them to stretch and to grow as readers and as human beings.”

Introducing Own Voices as an appeal term in NoveList October 22, 2018 Big news, folks! Own voices is now a searchable appeal term in NoveList. What is Own voices? The term originated as a hashtag created by YA author/disability activist Corinne Duyvis in September 2015. It has roots in another slogan, Nothing About Us Without Us, that became popular in disability activist communities of the 1990s. Latest Blog Posts: Young-Adult Photo courtesy of Faith Erin Hicks, First Second Books A 2018 upper-middle-grade title I recently read contained a throwaway comment by a character who commented that his family seemed “almost normal” in comparison to someone else’s. This was a 12-year-old boy from a family of white, cisgender, straight, middle-class people. What made this character’s family seem not normal were that his parents were divorced and he had a stepdad and half sister.

Strategic Classroom Design by Jessica Martin. Creating an Environment Introduction: Jessica shows readers that just because you have 25 students in a classroom, doesn't mean you need 25 desks. Consider flexible seating your new best friend. Allow students to do their work where they are most comfortable. When students make their own decisions about where they learn best, engagement increases, potential behavioral issues reduce, and students are given autonomy over their learning. See this in action in the introduction where Jessica walks you through a day with Jayvon and allows his classroom experience to show rather than tell just how strategic classroom design works.

Module 24a: Transforming Library Collections Part 1 – Project READY: Reimagining Equity & Access for Diverse Youth After working through this module, you will be able to: Explain to your faculty, staff, administrators, and parents/caregivers the value of diverse and reflective literature.Evaluate your library’s collection through a racial equity lens.Collaboratively develop a plan to improve your library’s collection to better serve BIYOC. Introduction Diversity is not praiseworthy.

Latest Blog Posts: Children's Photo courtesy of ekMEDIA It’s time to celebrate that most secular of holidays, Banned Books Week. Observed annually in the final week of September by a coalition that includes the American Library Association, the American Booksellers Association, and the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, among other organizations, Banned Books Week celebrates every reader’s freedom to read whatever they want, without barrier or censure. When I was a children’s librarian, I took great delight in assembling my annual display, festooning it with yellow police-line tape ... Dick and Jane may be rolling over in their literary graves at the notion of a beginning reader about a (mostly) dim-witted, boxers-wearin’ dude named Brain, who is eager for others to smell his foot.

Resources — The Third Teacher + The book is the resulting collection of ways to use to transform teaching and learning through the design of the learning environment - Loris Malaguzzi’s “third teacher.” Our goal with The Third Teacher book was to show that the design of a school is intrinsically linked to learning, and to even go a step further by demonstrating that design directly impacts teaching and learning. The book lives on, however, as a tool for participatory design that allows school stakeholders to enter into our design process. A Great Big List of MG and YA Collection Development Resources When I give presentations on doing Collection Diversity Audits, I get asked a lot about how I determine whether or not a book is counted as diverse. The process is always changing for me as I learn more and grow, and at this point I focus on Own Voices. The truth is, the answer to this question is that I continually engage in listening, learning, reading and growing. The work is never done and it must be intentional. I keep and continually add to an ongoing list of resources that help me do this work. Today I am sharing the bare bones of that list with you.