Category: diversity

Why lists and awards matter

Every year around this time, some parent will ask the teacher or myself what their child should be reading.

The “correct” response to this question is that we don’t make reading lists of prescribed or recommended books but prefer students to come and have a chat to us about what they like reading, what hobbies or interested they have and based on that we can personalise some recommendations for them. That we believe in free voluntary reading.

How many of you have had a follow up on that with the student popping by for that exciting interaction?  I started getting parents coming by personally around the end of my first year in my last job, and parents and children sometime in the second year and students on their own around the middle of my third year.

The truth is that people like lists and they like recommendations. This New Yorker article gives some ideas as to why lists matter – the most salient features are that lists “alleviates the paradox of choice” help with “reduction of uncertainty” and due to their finite nature are easier on the book budget both for school and home libraries!

Book Poster Neev Shortlist updated

So why are book awards important? According to Underdown:  ‘

“Awards are important in children’s books. They tell publishers, writers, and illustrators what is considered to be “the best,” and thus the standards they must strive to attain. Many children’s book awards, though not all, are selected by librarians. Award-winners then get orders from … both libraries and bookstores.  They will also stay in print longer. For writers and illustrators, getting to know the award-winning books … is one of the ways to understand what is considered to be the best today.“

The idea of finding out what the best is “today” rather than when authors / illustrators or publishers – or parents and librarians were children is very important. I’d love a dollar for each time a parent wants to force the literature of their youth onto their progeny. Reading through the long list of the Neev awards, there was also quite the body of what I’d call “nostalgic” storytelling. Which is really hard to carry off, and generally appeals more to adults than children. Which is why, it may be important to consider a children’s choice option when moving from a short-list to the finalists.

Following last year’s very successful initial Neev Festival, during the feedback discussions the idea of an Indian Children’s book award was floated. One of the driving ideas was that India had a large body of children’s literature, published in English, but not widely known nor distributed internationally. And selfishly, as librarians in an (Asian) international context with 40-50% Indian diaspora making up our student bodies, we were just not able to provide our students with the “mirrors, windows and glass sliding doors they deserved – mirrors for the Indian students, and windows and doors for the other students. Kavita Gupta Sabharwal is a very special person, both visionary and someone who makes things happen, including this book award, both from a logistical and a financial point of view. Each award carries a cash prize of Rs 1 lakh (around US$ 1,400 – a substantial amount in the Indian publishing world).

Already, just based on circulating the short-list in social media groups, there has been substantial interest from the librarian community. The prize-winners saw their books fly off the tables following the award ceremony, with all books sold-out by the end of the festival. An award sends a powerful signal to publishers and the public – one that says “pay attention” this has value, create more like this. The award stickers on the books a “buy me” beacon.

The final step in the equation and the gauntlet to be thrown is whether the publishing and distribution channels will be able to push these books out into the wider world where they deserve their moment(s) in the sun. And in the longer term, creating teacher guides and author visits, websites, hyperdocs, quizzes, eBooks and audio-books. For that is what the world has come to expect. But first the small steps, make the books available for every child, parent, teacher or librarian in the world who wants to push a “buy” button and have the book delivered to them, anywhere in the world.

#NotOurDiversity

I’m busy preparing for next week’s library lessons. G5 has one of my favourite units in “How We Express Ourselves”

People create messages to target specific audiences

Ostensibly it’s about advertising, as the lines of inquiry indicate,

1. Advertising techniques can be used to influence society (Perspective)
2. Critically evaluating messages presented in the media (Reflection)
3. Ways adverts can cause people to form opinions (Causation)

however to paraphrase and misquote Twain I’ve never let reality get in the way of a good lesson. So I’m loosely interpreting “media” to include books, and advertising to include things like book covers.

My opening salvo last week was “Cover Bias” where we looked at the cover of a book as the way in which it was advertised and I showed the class some more egregious examples of stereotype and bias in the creation of book covers

This week is my chance to tackle something I feel very strongly about – how the concept of children’s book diversity has been cornered by a very specific type of diversity – i.e. the North American type, which to be honest in the lives of my students is #NotOurDiversity. So I’d like to provide a counterbalance to that, as well as to start my students and everything thinking and curating resources that do reflect their diversity.

This is tomorrow’s provocation:

And I’m hoping at the end we can start creating a padlet of the books which they consider to be their mirrors, windows and sliding glass doors.

What do I think their diversity looks like? Some of it is typical to 3CK (3 culture kids), but each place I’ve lived has delivered its own nuance:

  • Product of multi- cultural / linguistic parentage and heritage (including multi-racial if that is even a term that is at all relevant – I don’t think it is to them, but probably in other contexts, countries it would be)
  • Multi-national residential where home is defined more by current location of self, parents and siblings than by family and passport
  • Financial privilege that transcends typical migrant / immigrant issues and trauma
  • Underlying uncertainty on matters of identity and lack of sense of “place”
  • High expectations of resilience, grit and adaptability to constant change

Before anyone thinks that the market is too small to matter for book publishing for example should have a look at the numbers – 56.8m people estimated by 2017 and even more importantly the demographics of expatriation has changed dramatically and will continue to change – no more British administrator, the reality is more likely to be an Indian IT specialist or Korean Engineer. And so too our literature should be evolving to provide their children in international education the mirrors, windows and doors they are entitled to.

Species at risk

(Usual disclaimers – does not reflect the position at my current school but a comment on librarianship as a whole etc. etc.)

I’ve been prompted to think about the library / librarian as part of an ecosystem (as opposed to the library ecosystem itself, * an important distinction) a lot recently as a result of the continued dismal reports on the state of libraries globally, but particularly in the USA / UK.  On some of my librarian groups there are school librarians saying that their annual budget is US$100, to which hundreds of others reply theirs is zero. In the largely International School Librarian bubble that I operate that is luckily unthinkable except in a few rare for profit schools with little reputation to care about.

My Grade 1 students in their “Sharing the Planet” unit of inquiry investigate ecosystems, and I love learning along with them, as I continually update my knowledge and integrate aspects that were neglected in my own education. Last year I organised a great guest speaker, Jennifer Fox to come in to talk about “Saving the Rhino” and while she was talking about Rhino’s as “Umbrella Species” I was thinking about just how libraries and librarians are a little like crucial species at risk, and did a little research on the matter.  The National Wildlife Federation identifies three types of species they work to protect: Keystone, Umbrella and Indicator. I’d argue libraries have characteristics of all of these species. Let’s look at the definitions:

Keystone: “Keystone species are species that enrich ecosystem function in a unique and significant manner through their activities, and the effect is disproportionate to their
numerical abundance. Their removal initiates changes in ecosystem structure and often loss of diversity.”

Umbrella species: “An umbrella species are typically large and require a lot of habitat. By protecting this larger area, other species are protected as well. Umbrella species generally have the following characteristics: their biology is well known, they are easily observed or sampled, they have large home ranges, they are migratory, and have a long lifespan.” 

Indicator species: “A species that is particularly sensitive to environmental conditions and therefore can give early warning signals about ecosystem health. Because they are so sensitive, a decline in indicator species’ health can signal air and water pollution, soil contamination, climate change or habitat fragmentation. Indicator species are often threatened or endemic (native) species.” (quotes from National Wildlife Federation).

Libraries (when I say libraries I want you to read “libraries staffed by trained and competent specialised librarians”) are Keystone in the way they enrich the communities around them whether that be a local community, a school or university, or even a commercial entity with a library. In school environments often the number of librarians is vastly out of proportion (in the diminutive sense) to the community they serve, and yet all the teacher librarians I come in contact with are hugely influential in setting the tone for literacy and research in their schools. Exchanging information with each other to maximise their footprint and benefit to the community. Most of us strive to allow the voice of diversity to be heard and to have collections that reflect diversity. And if allowed are a counterbalance to other voices in the ecosystem as we generally have a longitudinal view of literacy and learning.  Umbrella – well, yes, libraries are large with a big footprint. We take up space. And space is often at a premium. And as a result there is often significant pressure for us to be all things to all people. Something I’d argue that results in the myth of the “super librarian” and doesn’t always have the desired outcome. In the International sphere, as I’ve just been noticing with the annual “musical chairs” of teacher librarian job positions opening and closing, I’d say even the “migratory” part is true.

The saddest is the way in which libraries are Indicator species. And there I’d say countries like the UK are in dire straights with the state of libraries and librarianship being the canary in the coal canary coal minemine. This has the most awful knockoff effect that is unfortunately felt world-wide. Over the summer I toured a number of very prestigious and expensive private (called public there) schools in the UK with my daughter who was looking for 6th form boarding. None of them had the school library on tour, and when we asked to see them, if we were allowed more than a peek through a locked door they were dismal to say the least. Collections were outdated, the library was cramped with limited space and big desktop computers had prominence. But besides that the library had no “presence” at the school in the sense of posters advertising books, announcements, classroom libraries, anything to say that the library was an active and valued part of the community. This is not only a pity for that particular school. Unfortunately the pool of international educators and particularly heads of schools and divisions is often taken from graduates and teachers from these institutions. And of course the Peter Effect applies – they too cannot give what they do not have. Show me a teacher-librarian struggling in a school ecosystem and you can probably follow the trail to an “under-libraried” principal or school head. Research and advocacy on the importance of reading and libraries be damned, they don’t feel it / have it in them, so it’s an intellectual construct for them. The converse is also true, I’m incredibly fortunate to have both a principal and head of schools who believe in libraries – yes, believe as in a tenant of faith, because I think that is actually what is needed – belief not just lip-service to borrow religious analogies along with my eco-system ones.

Digging around for some statistics I can see how circular reasoning is employed. Libraries are expensive, both in capital costs, in person-power and in keeping collections up to date, in the link above you can see a decline in spending and a decline in borrowing. Correlation is not causation, but the last “big spend” was around 2009 – are patrons interested in an outdated collection? I’m a member of the Singapore public library system. I actually physically visit the library once a year, to renew my membership card (and if I could do that online I would) but I borrow eBooks and audiobooks on a bi-weekly basis to get my “adult book fix” that’s not supplied by having K-6 books on tap in my school library. Beware of statistics.

Continuing on the ecosystem theme – who are the “big five” in education (if hunting refers to head-hunting)? To go back to a much read blog-post I wrote earlier on that dirty little word “power” again, looking at recruiting and search, I’m stunned that teacher librarians, a position requiring two masters degrees plus a teaching certification and “experience” are lumped in with teaching staff and are not part of the “leadership” positions. Librarians, like curriculum coordinators, heads of division and heads of schools have an overview of entire sections of schools. They give input into resourcing teaching and learning. Often have a dual role in learning technology as well as databases, digital and physical resources. Usually supervise library assistants and manage large budgets and a facility. Yet they are on teacher contracts and can and are regularly shoved back into the classroom when budget strings are tightened. There was much outrage on our International School Librarians’ group recently when a position in a prominent (UK) name brand school came up and the 13 page application form included such irrelevancies such as EVERY school attended since age 12 and EVERY job ever held as well as personal information such as whether your own children needed learning support (on the first page). Most people said they gave up after the first or second page as the information was largely irrelevant to the function, outdated or reeked of an exclusivity that didn’t align with their personal educational philosophies. Good luck finding a great librarian there, or maybe they’ll just staff it with the (unqualified) partner of a higher power or a nonfunctioning teacher (yes this happens more than you could imagine).

In saving libraries and qualified librarians we are not just saving buildings or people’s jobs, we’re saving the continued existence and perpetuation of literacy, learning, knowledge and wisdom. As crucial to a civilised society as the air we breath. Stop worrying about fake news, if we focus on good well run libraries the problem would take care of itself.

*Here is another great article using the eco-sytem metaphor – this time about feral and hybrid academic librarians!

Meting out diversity

The whole diversity thing bothers me. Has for some time. We seem to love the optics of diversity, but not so much the reality.  And so we mete out our diversity in acceptable chunks at acceptable moments. And in doing so we can fool ourselves – most of the time. We also mete out our encounters with diversity such that they don’t necessarily have to touch us in ways that are meaningful. We thereby send clear messages to all our students, diverse and – well what is the word not for diverse – dominant? Oh, begin to define dominant in an international school and don’t bother looking at the nationalities of the students, or pictures of them. You

meteprobably need only to look at a handful of people. Those in leadership. And chances are they’ll all be white male of a certain age, background and education, with a judicious sprinkling of women.

 

Before anyone gets excited about that, think about the following reported encounter by prospective parents in an ethnically mixed marriage. The primary school I’m at is wonderfully diverse in the composition of the teacher body. On entering a classroom with a caucasian teacher, one of the parents exclaimed “at last, a proper English teacher” (for the record, she wasn’t English, but obviously appearance counts). When at the Neev festival in Bangalore, I remarked to my friend how gorgeous and natural she looked in her salwar kameez and asked her why I hadn’t seen her wearing one at school in Singapore while working for a big name, self-proclaimed “diverse” school. She looked at me aghast and said there was no way it would have been possible outside of the UN celebrations and that all staff was expected to dress professionally and adopt the school values and world view irrespective of their personal beliefs or experience. Now this is a school that prides itself on the fact that they have a uniform but don’t police the interpretation of its manifestation. Where I attended a lecture today, and saw every possible variation in student “teen dress expression” but not so in the teaching body.

DiversityInChildrensBooks2015_f

So we get to the mundane part of throwing some books in the library that reflect the culture, language and backgrounds of our students. Can we even do that without breaking through the cultural myopia? I still have to keep thinking back to this experience when I realised that truly we are up against so much, and putting books in the library is a bandaid on the wound of an amputee. If we struggle even conceptually with putting textbooks from different countries whose educational philosophy we “disagree” with (how dare we?), what happens with literature, that is so much more subversive?

 

 

I recently purchased around 100 books written and/or illustrated by Indian authors. It was hard work “selling them” to my students. Even the Indian students. Especially the Indian students. I used the above infographic to explain to students how skewed their world view is.  And the worst of it all, is this in itself is a North American view. Let’s not even talk about the fact that most of the 73.3% white characters and 12.5% animal, truck etc. characters are male. By the end of the week, after discussions about being open-minded and balanced and being a risk-taker, most of my books were borrowed.

A few of my students exclaimed they “loved” one or another of the authors. Some parents expressed surprise that I had so many books, and amazement that I’d used my 30kg luggage allowance to lug back books. Now Indian books are possibly one of the lowest barrier “diverse” books an international school could add to their collection. Quite simply because English is a common language. No translation is required. There is a thriving publishing industry. A huge diaspora. Many schools have 25-30% of their student body from the Indian subcontinent. And yet, until a month ago I probably had fewer than 10 “Indian” books in my collection. Most of them picture books from Tara Books.  Little to nothing in Junior fiction and a few Ash Mistry books in fiction. And now? I have the books. Students have borrowed them once. Will they go back into the shelves along with the Diwali books only to make a reappearance next year this time when it’s acceptable to celebrate and embrace Indian culture?

Any literature on language and culture will quickly point to dominant / aspirational and socio-economic preferred language and culture. As a South African who spent most of her life mired in shame, unable and unwilling to admit to my heritage, I truly “get” the ambivalence (while remaining astounded by continued British bluster – particularly here in Asia).

And that is the problem with every article ever written about diversity. We lament the absence of the optic. We gloss over some of the “hardware” issues (authors, illustrators, translators), we may even get to structural problems (publishing houses, editors, market sizes). But we neglect to think about how the structure of our education and schools will support those tender shoots, will allow our communities to claim not just their heritage, but current philosophies. We close down libraries, we limit budgets, we operate in echo chambers, we fail to make library education affordable and accessible to local staff. We concentrate our online efforts to gadgets and gizmos instead of access, community and understanding.

What do I do in our library / school?

Of course the five f’s: food, fashion, famous people, festivals, and flags. Mea culpa here. I have books about (just about) every nation in our school, and scramble each year to make sure there’s at least one book by the time Uniting Nations comes around.

I buy all the books suitable for my elementary school from the USBBY list – cognisant of the fact that it is the US – i.e. pre-digested for USA sensibilities.

I follow blogs of avid supporters of diverse literature such as Dr. Myra Bacsal’s “Gathering Books” and Rachel Hildebrandt ‘s Global Literature in Libraries (seriously, I’m one of only 200 odd people following this AWESOME Blog??  – they also have a facebook page btw if that’s more your thing).  Who give exposure to people like Avery Fischer Udagawa with her new list for 2017 of 100 more works translated for kids, following Marcia Lynx Qualey’s 2016 100 Great Translated Children’s Books from Around the World.

Following what’s being published via the Bologna book fair. Reading reports such as those created by Wischenbart.

And then I devote part of my budget to buy the books, and make sure they’re slotted into resource lists for our units of inquiry, and read them aloud, and “sell” them to teachers and my PYP coordinators.

Put out google alerts for diverse books, join FB groups of librarians around the world. Ask, ask, ask, in the community, parents, librarians, teachers, students.

Write about it. Write about it again, and again.

What more can we do?

Hard stuff. Advocacy. Fostering a sense of national / cultural pride in all our students – not just those from the dominant / desirable communities. Conversations with teachers and administrators. Looking at what our students are writing about – who are the characters in their writing? Ignoring the deluge of books from BANA countries. Being tireless. Fighting even with institutions doing brilliant work like “Global Readaloud” about the choice of their books that are NOT global. Even when all of this is very very tiring and makes you seem like a harpy.

The Indian Books

Hopefully this scrolling widget will work – here are the books I purchased (plus a few we already had in our collection), if not you can see them in my catalog here or on my library guide here (look for the Indian Flag).

 

Of all the wonderful books I bought, I’d particularly like to highlight: “between MEMORY and MUSEUMIMG_6373IMG_6374” – a dialogue with folk and tribal artists, edited by Arun and Gita Wolf. Anyone teaching PYP, TOK or just anything about anything should get this book for the wonderful analysis and illustration of what museum and tradition and symbols mean.

Celebrating the joy of reading

Last weekend I had the privilege of being invited to join the first children’s literature festival in India, hosted by Neev Academy in Bangalore.  What a fabulous weekend it was.

IMG_6326

One of my constant concerns as a librarian here in Singapore in an international school is that I don’t feel that my collection reflects the many rich and varied cultures and identities that my students have. So I must admit (selfishly) one of the first things that crossed my mind when I was invited was YAY, I don’t have to wait until ECISlibrary2018 to go on an Indian book buying spree for my library!

When I arrived on Thursday evening, I met up with Maya Thiagarajan, author of “Beyond the Tiger Mom“, friend, ex-colleague and fabulous once-a-month book-club member. Getting together is always so exciting as we have a million-and-one things to chat about, and her move to Chennai has created a huge gap for me, but is a wonderful thing for India as she can share her knowledge, experience and expertise with schools there. We brainstormed together for a presentation we were doing for parents and the public on “grow to read and read to grow” and then she gave me her perspectives as a classroom teacher on my workshop for teachers and administrators on Classroom libraries. Then we decided to do the workshop together instead of separately as it would add a multi-perspective to it!

On Friday, the first thing that struck me as I entered the school, besides the warm welcome, was the wonderful posters and signage and set up.

The Friday was set aside for celebrating storytelling, books and literature with children. I must say I was really happy to see the emphasis on storytelling, since it is the basis of everything. In fact, when I was asked to run a workshop for 5 year olds, that’s the first thing I thought of – using a wordless book as a prompt to encourage students to tell a story.

My session used the wordless books “Chalk” and “The Typewriter” by Bill Thomson to introduce the basic elements of a story – build up to a problem and a solution. First I told them they’d been tricked and I wasn’t going to read a story to them, but they were going to read to me (groans all around) and then they proceeded to do so, with “Chalk” lured by the images! We then spoke a little about the problem and solution and I said I had another book where something similar was going on and they could read it to me as well. I then projected “The Typewriter” (as I didn’t have a hardcopy) and we went through the same procedure, adding more prediction in this time.  Then they went off to tables we’d set up with plain black goodie bags and cut out gold moons and stars to make their own “magic chalk” bag. They came back to the carpet and were told they were going to make their own story without words with magic chalk. We brainstormed some ideas of what kind of problems could happen and what their solutions would be. Such wonderful ideas, ranging from torrential rainstorms and flooding, to a meteorite crashing into earth, sharks attacking a mermaid, ghosts coming into the a house and scaring people etc.! We also chatted about how you would (in the case of the ghost story) show that time had passed and the ghost left and they came up with having a moon in some of the pictures with the ghost and a sun when the ghost fled. What was great was that some then said they wanted to do it in “teams”.  Off they then went, armed with A1 black paper, folded into 6 panels and unfolded to de-mark scenes and lots of coloured chalk.  As they were drawing I wandered the class with their teachers talking to them about the stories as they unfolded.  90 minutes without a break was barely enough to have everything finished and they proudly left with their magic bags and story creations.

The rest of the day flew by, popping in and out of classes and storytelling sessions, followed by the teacher workshop on classroom libraries.  I’d somehow misheard that it was for 15/16 teachers… actually it was for 50-60 teachers – their whole staff!  Maya and I had already (luckily, as that’s our philosophy) decided to take the tack that the existence or not of a classroom library was merely one part of creating a culture and eco-system of reading in a school. The session was lively and interactive.  That’s  one of the things I grew to really appreciate about what is going on a Neev academy – the vision of creating an alternative to traditional teaching and learning in their school, using the frameworks of the IB system and the encouragement of pleasure reading.  As a non-international school they shine out as a beacon for local students.

Saturday’s sessions were opened to the wider community and public with a rousing speech by visionary Neev Academy founder Kavita Gupta Sabharwal. 

Maya had the honour of being on a panel with Dr. Shyam Bhat and Sudha Murty and all three spoke of the importance of reading and storytelling, emotionally, from a neuro-science and educational point of view.  My panel on “trends vs. traditions” co-hosted with Jane DeSouza with Ankit Chadha;  Timeri Murari; Sohini Mitra and Reena Puri looked at the threats and potential of globalisation and the digital era on traditional storytelling, publishing and writing.

Then in-between another book buying spree at Lightroom Bookstore (who had a pop-up store at the festival). What a fabulous bookseller – I really really love independent bookstores with knowledgeable founders and staff who delight in the books as much as I do. Ones where you just have to start describing the book whose name you’ve forgotten and it’s suddenly in your hands! I had chance to meet up with the lovely librarians at both Neev Academy and Stonehill International School and we did what librarians do best – geek out on what our favourite resources were, what our websites included, how we resource our respective curricula and darn, there just wasn’t enough time so we have to continue our conversations online and through librarian facebook groups.

I then caught the tail end of  a lively discussion “Should we fear the Dark?” that explored dark themes in children’s literature – luckily I shared a taxi with Paro Anand afterwards so we could continue the conversation together afterwards. I love fearless authors!

A dual author dual illustrator graphic novel

Maya and I shared the closing session of the day, focusing on how to hook children on reading and keep them reading with some great audience participation, and before we knew it, it was all over!

A great weekend, incredibly well organised and curated, buzzing with ideas and thought stimulation, discovering new books and authors. My biggest regret was the inability to clone myself so that I could join all the sessions simultaneously. Well done to Neev Academy and Kavita.

(PS Here is a selection of the book loot – invited our Singapore librarian network librarians around to have a look last week!

 

No excuses: Syndetics

It must be an age thing – but as I’m getting further into my 50’s I’m becoming less tolerant of fancy sounding reasons and explanations that are actually just excuses for staving off change. This is the first of a series of posts on things that really annoy me as an international librarian, with a smattering of understanding of technology and a desire to serve ALL students, teachers, parents and administrators in my community as best I can. I have an overdeveloped sense of fairness and justice and I sometimes feel that librarians as a group are just too nice and suck up way too many things.

brazen

I’ll also admit to being emboldened by a FABULOUS new biography on women called “Brazen” (coming out in English next year – thank you Netgalley for the preview copy) You can preorder your copy now – suitable for High School 13+. And in fact this book just highlights what I’m going to write about today. This book originated in French. I’m currently totally inspired by the Guardian’s World library list and wanted to replicate it, adapted for primary school, particularly with a view to Uniting Nations day coming up in November.

bangladeshNow I work really hard at trying to transform my library into one that is representative of my students. I love the fact that my one Bangladeshi student asks me every week if I have any new books about or set in Bangladesh. And that at the beginning of term she came to proudly tell me that she was no longer the one and only but had been joined by another family. And when I showed her our new book about Bangladesh she took time out of her library browsing time to show me all the things the book depicted that were special to her.

I also work hard on my libguides to make sure that my books are showcased graphically and visually to make perusing them interesting for primary level students. So this is when I get really annoyed that Syndetics, the one interface for front covers that just about every system, from OPAC to libguides to LibraryThingsforLibraries uses does NOT seem to recognise that there is a publishing industry outside of the BANA (Britain, Australia, North America) countries – in fact they even struggle with Australia most the time. And don’t let me even consider China – well they cheat a bit – a lot actually – thinking that one ISBN number should suffice for a whole series of books – even if there are 57 books in the series.

This means that my libguide with my books from and about other countries, my catalog and my destiny discover new books respectively looks like this:

 

Spot the problem? And Syndetics actually prides itself in the fact that the covers of the coverless books are now colourful with title and author. NOT GOOD ENOUGH! For my catalog, my library assistants spend hours manually inserting the covers, and for the much touted, over promised under-delivered Destiny discover it’s just a blue boring nothing. So 5 of my 8 most recently purchased books are just blue blobs. So if you’re a librarian trying to diversify AND to make your new purchases appealing the cards are stacked against you.

Before I started writing this post I thought I’d do a bit of research into Syndetics, and the whole cover image thing. And then I thought no damnit. I won’t.  I don’t really care what the reason or excuse is. They’re selling an expensive service. They’re complicit in not improving the marketing of diversity of literature and I’m just going to put it out there and they can do the explaining, and hopefully a bit of soul searching on how they can make this better. What BIG things, what IMPORTANT and sea-change things they, as a big corporation as opposed to me as a little librarian in a little library serving 650 students from 40 nations can achieve.

 

 

 

 

Books I wish would be published

I’ve been asked to be on a panel at the AFCC to chat about “Books Teachers Wish Authors Would Write” from a teacher / librarian perspective. So I put the question out on one of my teacher-librarian networks (an international one) and these were the responses I received:
  • World war 2 in Asia- novel for 8-10 year olds (NF / NNF)
  • big shortage of narrative nonfiction that is NOT about the holocaust, slavery, the American great depression or US civil rights. Also shortage of intra-Asia migration stories not Asia to Europe / north America (NF / NNF)
  • Third culture kids as main characters (CD)
  • More stories about our present/ early future stories that include digital tools and behaviour (D)
  • I’m looking for things like “lego ideas / lego play” but in small manageable books that kids can take out without breaking their backs / the book
  • nonfiction – updated human rights / millennial goals / NGOs / Poverty etc. for G4 level (9 year old) mixed format, good graphic design, mix of narrative and fact (NF)
  • Middle school nonfiction – life in different economic / political systems – communist, socialist, social democracy etc. with a world wide unbiased view of positives and negatives with personal stories and data (NNF)
  • Books on gaming or from the creators of games like Minecraft, Roblox, etc. (D)
  • Conflicts over resources around the world – case studies that are elementary friendly (NF)
  • The next “The Outsiders.” Something to appeal to the teens who fall in love with it in class, and are looking for something like it.
  • Decent Biographies that are at elementary aged level & middle school level without being dumbed down – with more Asian protagonists! (CD / NF)
  • Books purposely written for upper ES that has appropriate content and reading “level” (ELL)
  • More ES novels featuring multicultural characters that are not related to war or historical events (CD)
  • Books about world topics that are appropriate for kinder/g2 (NF)
  • Modern urban indigenous stories – universal experiences in all first nations people. (CD)
  • Easy read stories that are well written & not dumbed down for teens. – yes! especially for our ELL students! And that don’t portray just the…..dark side of life? I feel like when I was purchasing for xxx, the high interest/low level books all were about gang members/drug dealers in the US. (ELL)
  • Science fiction for Elementary kids. (SF)
  • Middle Grade fiction with a Korean protagonist (My Name Was Keoko style) (CD)
  • Books with culturally diverse characters. I still remember teaching a boy could Yousef who threw the book down in disgust and said ‘Why can’t they give them normal names?’……the character was called Joseph. Which really isn’t that out there, unless you’re an Arab boy. Then it’s just weird. (CD)
  • LGBT books for tweens (G)
  • Definitely more emigration/immigration stories that are intra-Asia. There are so many diaspora stories to be told that have nothing to do with Europe or North America. (NF / NNF)
  • Does anyone want war stories set in Asia – like Japanese invasion/ Korean War / American or Vietnam war with perspective from the non-western side – or is that too sensitive? (NF / NNF)
  • My teachers want more World War 1 fiction for grades 6-8 and social justice books for middle schoolers.(NF / NFF)
  • My middle school girls want more heroes that are NOT princesses. (G)
  • My boys want fiction that has video game elements like Minecraft stories.(D)
  • All of my high schoolers want “classics” with better covers.
  • what about this: teachers, school, parents do not compare my score with others, do not give me homework, I want to play. (C)

I’ve tried to code the answers as follows:

  • NF / NNF: narrative nonfiction – 10x
  • CD: cultural diversity – 6x
  • D: digital / gaming element – 3x
  • G: Gender related – 2x
  • ELL: hi lo / books for English Language Learners – 2x
  • SF: Science fiction – 1x
  • C: cultural issue – 1x

Looking at these I think that the theme is a general frustration with a lack of books with an Asian context.  Particularly historical fiction / narrative nonfiction and culturally diverse characters. We all know that the USA dominates publishing, followed by the UK. Australia has some good stuff out but limits itself by its steep pricing, expensive shipping costs and insular publishing industry. China is a late entrant into children’s books and is making great inroads – but mainly in translation into Chinese. What is particularly commendable is that they are not just translating the (North) American staples but many of the brilliant and wonderful European offerings.

Then I did a similar exercise with the BWB (Blokes with Books) yesterday. I asked them to go in groups of 2-4 students and tell me what kind of book they were missing in their lives. Books they wish authors would write.   They were amazing – a couple of groups even started writing the books they wish were written (a nice outcome given the fact that teachers are now complaining that we’ve got them reading but their writing is still poor).

Their suggestions could also be broadly grouped:

  • Two groups wanted Harry Potter extensions or back stories – one wanted the parallel books that focused on the other houses, not just Gryffindor Tower. Another group was fascinated by the horcruxes and wanted a book on that.
  • One group wanted an elaborate Pokemon book that inverted some of the characters with unexpected twists.
  • One group combined the ideas of the three group members into a fantasy / reality mixture involving video games and rugby with a wimpy gaming protagonist being forced to play rugby by an over-zealous parent and learning tricks and manouvers in video games that led him to dominate on the real life rugby pitch.
  • One group wanted (and started outlining the chapters) of a Roblox user manual.
  • Quite a few of them agreed they’d like fiction books with colour pictures inside

I’d like to add a note to the above list – the students are not yet familiar with fan fiction, and I’m not sure they’ve looked into the Harry Potter wikis. In a sense that makes me happy that they’re still at that wonderful age where this type of magical immersive reading stuff is to be found in books rather than online. They are aware that there are user forums on these games and chat rooms etc. BUT THEY WANT TO READ ABOUT IT IN A BOOK. This is a GOOD thing. Whenever they ask for books about Minecraft and Roblox and video games and I tell them we have some of the storybook series, the Minecraft “how to” and “surely you can just ask online” they say “but we want a book”.  There are few Roblox books and they all seem to be eBook editions (publishing haste?). The Minecraft adventure books are not what they’re looking for – remember the colour pictures comment? They want more graphics! I think also as adults we see their online/offline selves as separate, whereas they don’t, and they want to see that new normal reflected in what they read. They’re all avid fantasy readers, and that I think is partially meeting their need for that online/offline fantasy/reality integration.

A caveat to all the comments (and a personal gripe) – above all children want a well written story. They don’t want to be preached to. They’re sophisticated and well- and globally read. And they can spot the fakes. As a teacher-librarian I get immensely frustrated by wanna-be and self-published authors who keep trying to foist their wares on me when it’s immediately apparent that they’re poorly written, even more badly illustrated, not edited and horribly and cheaply published. Writers need to read. They need to read a lot, they need to read widely. They need to research not just their topic but also who else has written about it, tangentially to it, similarly to it. If you want to self-publish, unless you’re a designer, pay someone to do your design for you. Unless you’re an author-illustrator find the best illustrator you can afford. And everyone, join a writing / critique group (like SCWBI) – honestly, other authors are not out to steal your ideas – they’re too busy working on their own passions. And when you think you’re done, get a good and critical editor. All authors need good editors, even great authors. Do yourself a favour and look at the interactive TS Eliot “The Wasteland” and see all the handwritten edits by Ezra Pound.

To come back to the forum and the original question that started all this:

“Creators can step into the shoes of a teacher for one hour and learn what makes a book a treasured find. From beautiful illustrations to didactic language, speakers discuss their views on relevant and useful books children need and love.”

What a huge question. Relevant is not always pedagogically useful. Useful for whom? Relevant to what?  I’d like to end with the most relevant and useful and just plain wonderful book I’ve encountered this year – Stormy seas: stories of young boat refugees. 

31213610 Well done Annick Press (that does a lot of amazing things – particularly in nonfiction) It has become the new gold standard to which I will hold all nonfiction. The elements that make it so special:

  • Great graphics – combination of good design elements with original primary source photos
  • Easy to navigate blocks of text
  • Personal stories
  • Historical facts
  • Timelines
  • Maps

It is not out yet (April 2017) and I got a preview copy through Netgalley (sign up if you’re a teacher / librarian), I showed it to a couple of classes from G3-G6 and all were clamouring for a copy afterwards – something unusual for nonfiction. And when I couldn’t give them I copy I managed to “sell” some of my otherwise untouched narrative nonfiction / historic fiction books on WW2 etc.

Another surprising (but not really because it’s so absolutely wonderful) hit has been Echo. It’s a huge book but every child and adult whose hand I’ve put 22749539it into  has just loved it – depite the fact that it takes a while to get through. Why – I suspect that the range and diversity of the characters and settings is satisfying to my international audience. But it is also great storytelling. And then they go on to read all the other Pam Muñoz Ryan books, which is also an excellent outcome.

 

What would you like to see more of that is “relevant and useful”?

A tale of two systems

I’ve just spent the last 4 days at the #LKSW2017 where 80 librarians around the SE Asian region got together to learn and share (mainly teacher) librarian practise. I also hosted a Chinese lady from a school in China and gave a daily ride to another Canadian librarian working at a school in China. We had some great conversations.

The first workshop I attended was led by Brad Tyrell. He of the magnificent Libguides at Scotch College that induce envy in every other libguide – even if you know that there is a slew of very techie people behind the gloss. During the workshop he kept emphasizing that everything that they’ve done is on a creative commons basis, and in fact shared all the documentation and templates used to make the guides.  He also explained that their staff’s job descriptions include an imperative to share what they’ve done – so everytime they’ve created a new library guide, they not only share it with staff and students internally, but they also have to post it on the listserv / social media of their local library association.

This is something I’m very comfortable with, and in fact have had many discussions with my lecturers at CSU about plagiarism and the sharing of academic output amongst students, where my (slightly controversial) view was that every academic assignment I’ve made is, and should be public, and that if students abuse it, or lecturers can’t be bothered to change the assignment, the system should take care of it… discussions documented here.  My libguides are also open, and I encourage people to take what they need from them and to adapt them to their own situation – and in turn, I get inspiration and links and resources from the other community guides. What do we all want? A little acknowledgement and for it to be on a “I share so you don’t just take, but also share”.

Then there is the in-between state, I’d call it the TpT state (teachers pay teachers), where you’ve made something that’s taken so much work, it’s done in your spare time and has cost you time and effort and is of a quality that you feel you can sell it. Personally I don’t do this, I’m more on the open source side of things, but I have bought items from other teachers where I like what they’ve done and don’t think I could do a better job.  For a rationale for this model, please read this.

And then the opposite extreme.  Chatting to my two compatriots working in China, I was surprised to hear that neither their catalogues, nor their library guides were open.  I was asking about sourcing Chinese books for our program in particular, and specifically nonfiction books for our UOIs. While they were helpful, and the actual answer is due to the predominance of text-books their is a less developed nonfiction publishing market at the primary level, none of their catalogs or resource lists were open. So unlike many other schools where I could take a look into their lists to find some good resources, this wouldn’t be possible. They explained that the Chinese private school market is very very competitive and this is all considered to be proprietary and competitive information.

Which of course leads to the question – are you being stupid or reducing your own competitiveness by sharing?  I’d like to think not and that everyone is better off as a result of this and opening things up allows them to be improved upon. Provided of course that the person doing the adaptation and improving is similarly civic minded and pays the sharing forward – which isn’t always the case.

Diversity and "multicultural" literature

Deep into my readings on this topic and it’s not making me feel particularly cheerful.  The statistics are appalling.
On the one hand one should be glad that there are enough people who care enough to keep count. On the other, it doesn’t appear that the counting leads to any measurable improvement.

Here are the statistics from 2002 to 2014 from Cooperative Children’s Book Center School of Education, University of Wisconsin-Madison.  And to take note of their criteria – it’s only the diversity of the United States that is counted – i.e. African / African Americans; American Indians; Asian Pacifics / Asian Pacific Americans and Latinos. The diversity in the rest of the world? Well who is counting? Who cares? Or are we just not able to access it?  What about the glory of the international librarian networks? Or are we really just still in our bubbles?

Looking at the translation scene in the USA via the Batchelder Awards; Garrison, Forest and Kimmel (2014) remark how:

“A brief skim of the most recent winners and honors shows that most of the books derive from European languages including French, German, and Dutch. The story settings show somewhat broader geographic diversity including places throughout Europe as well as Asia, Africa, and South America. Garrison and Kimmel (in press) found that a composite Batchelder Award winner or honor from the years 1997-­2013 would be a realistic fiction novel set in Western Europe featuring a male protagonist and dealing with a serious topic like World War II.” (Garrison, Forest & Kimmel, 2014, p. 72).
The absolute skewness in publishing is highlighted in this (dated, but probably still relevant and apparently not recently updated) dichotomy:
“While children’s literature from so-called developing countries hardly ever reaches European and American readers, a recent survey revealed that 80 per cent of books for children set in non-European and non-American cultures are written by European and American authors (Fremde Welten 2001) (O’Sullivan, 2004, p.20)…Alongside these countries which only export children’s books while almost failing entirely to import any are those which provide a market for the global corporations – 70 to 90 per cent of books available to reading children in non-European/American cultures are by European or American authors – but whose own books rarely cross the linguistic, political or cultural divide to partake in the Western market (O’Sullivan, 2004 p.22).”
Other low points include the depiction or even existence of racially / culturally mixed children or people (Chaudhri, 2013) – a reality that is strikingly obvious the moment you walk into any (international) school.
Onwards and upwards… it can’t get any worse after all.

References:

Chaudhri, A. (2013). Growing up mixed/up: Multiracial identity in children’s and young adult literature. In J. C. Naidoo & S. P. Dahlen (Eds.), Diversity in youth literature: opening doors through reading (pp. 95–123). Chicago, Ill: ALA-Ed.
Garrison, K. L., Forest, D. E., & Kimmel, S. C. (2014). Curation in translation: Promoting global citizenship through literature. School Libraries Worldwide, 20(1), 70–96. 
O’Sullivan, E. (2004). Internationalism, the universal child and the world of children’s literature. In P. Hunt (Ed.), International companion encyclopedia of children’s literature (2nd ed., pp. 13–25). London ; New York: Routledge. Retrieved from EBook Library