Since I was going home for the weekend, I thought this would be a perfect opportunity to discover the types of diverse children literature existing in my hometown library. Hudson Library is a fairly new library since being redone a couple of years ago. When walking to the children’s section, the selection of books was massive. I approached the librarian explaining how I was in a children’s literature course concentrating on diversity. I said I was looking for books containing Arabic culture or GLBT for my final project.
As learned in class, both of these groups are highly misrepresented and scarce in children’s literature. As she was looking through the database with the titles of books I had found, she was unable to find any book on GLBT and one book on Arabic culture. I was extremely surprised by the lack of diverse children’s literature in my hometown library, especially in Arabic culture. A large Muslim population including one of my best friends from high school lives only twenty minutes away from Hudson in Kent. As a suburban largely consisting of Caucasians, I questioned how children would get exposed to other diverse cultures when their library doesn’t even have the means to support it.
1 comment:
It is very surprising that a library with a diverse community wouldn't have books to represent that. I think that realizing this issue before you start teaching will really benifit you and your future class. Children need to be exposed to multicultural literature and if they don't get it at home or their public library then we as teachers are the ones left to give it to them.
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