April
18
Tags
Becoming More Diverse – A Library Journey by Crystal Brunelle
“There are books with Hmong?” This question broke my heart a little. The boy was shocked when I had casually mentioned a book with a Hmong character. He had made it to third grade without realizing that there were books related to his home culture and that they were available in his school library. You should have seen his whole face light up when I led him to those books.
It was my first year as the library media specialist at Northern Hills and we had a handful of books with Hmong characters, but his question made me realize that those books weren’t visible enough. I began to display the books and booktalk them with classes and students and made sure that they were easy to find. I also started looking for more books to add to the collection. We have a significant Hmong population in our community and the few books we had were a start, but we needed more. My search led me to a wonderful store called Hmong ABC in St. Paul. They have an online store, but the next time I drove to the cities, I made a point to stop into the physical store and make some purchases too.
Through my search, I even found a book written by a local author. She was my very first author visit and we were hers. We learned about organizing author visits together and it was a great experience. Her book, Ka’s Garden, was in both Hmong and English. As I prepared students for her visit, I found that very few of them knew the term bilingual in reference to books or people. There were many teachable moments for my students and for me. It was fantastic to see eyes brighten as I made my attempt to pronounce Hmong words. The book provided a pronunciation guide, but it is a tonal language so I made plenty of mistakes. There were giggles and helpful corrections as several Hmong students voluntarily took the role of teacher – instructing me. I never put any of the students on the spot, but invariably at least one student would generally step in if I messed up. The other students soon discovered that there were actually bilingual people in our midst. I loved seeing these same students with brilliant smiles sitting tall during the author’s visit.
I began to purchase more bilingual books. Initially I only bought a few books because not that many of my students read languages beyond English even if they spoke another language. I hadn’t connected the dots yet. Soon though, a few of my students shared that someone was helping them read a book in Hmong or Spanish. This is definitely an excellent way to support home languages.
We now have a variety of bilingual books with languages including Korean, Urdu, Spanish, Chinese, Ojibwe, and many others in addition to Hmong. We may or may not have students or families who speak all of those languages, but students are becoming more aware that there are other cultures in our world to appreciate and that knowing a second language is valuable. In addition, these books simply open up space for discussion about the wider world.
It has been exciting to see students experiencing their own culture within the pages of books for the first time, but it is not only Hmong students benefiting from the new books. Many of the books are simply good stories and students can make connections to the situations and personalities within the stories regardless of their ethnic background. Also, one of our more popular books is Hmong Textile Designs. It’s a non-fiction book filled with beautiful Hmong designs used to embellish story cloths, clothing, purses and other textiles. Students love to look at them and make pictures inspired by the designs.
Over the past few years I have been purchasing many books that reflect our multicultural world and connecting with authors from diverse backgrounds. Our school had an amazing visit from Kashmira Sheth and second grade got to Skype with Mina Javaherbin too. I will continue to try to reach out beyond our community and continue to learn from others.
In January I celebrated the first Multicultural Children’s Book Day and created a rather lengthy list of my favorite diverse kidlit on Goodreads. All of the books on the list have a home in our school library. I’m excited to continue on this journey with my students – learning more about others and about ourselves through the books we explore together. If you are interested in adding more diverse literature to your life and library, here is a link to some great resources. Please share some of your favorite diverse children’s or young adult literature in the comments!
Crystal Brunelle teaches in the library at Northern Hills Elementary School in Wisconsin. She is the co-founder of richincolor.com and blogs there as well as on her personal blog readingtl.blogspot.com. You may also find her on Twitter as @librarygrl2.
Nerdy Book Club 
I LOVE the Goodreads list! Thanks so much for sharing. I will be reading through the list with a pad of paper handy, because there are so many titles I’ve never heard of. I only wish I knew about this earlier.
You’re welcome. I hope you enjoy them as much as my students and I have.
Bravo! Every child should have access to books in which they can themselves and their lives represented. We often miss out on how powerful that truly is. And I love that you realize kids need to be exposed to other cultures, as well. I would love to visit your library!
Thanks! It truly is powerful. I am so glad that I have the chance to add great books to our library that represent our students and beyond.
That should say “see themselves”
Wonderful post, Crystal. You remind me of the treasure of a student seeing him- or herself in a book in the library. Or seeing the world beyond themselves. I’ve been too casual about that recently.
It’s truly amazing to see a student get excited when they realize there are books that feature children like them. Books like The Other Half of My Heart & The Blossoming Universe of Violet Diamond have been very meaningful to some of my students. For some students it’s because they are also biracial like the main characters and for some it’s because they see that these are wonderful stories about family.
Ever read a book where the hero is a Vietnamese woman, mother, owner of a nail salon? Read Counting by 7s, by by Holly Goldberg Sloan. The book has so much more than that, but Patty being the hero made it special.
I really enjoyed Counting by 7s. Great title.
Your post raises a related question: How do librarians go about finding “mid-list” books to add took your collection? (I mean books that aren’t the obvious super popular picks, e.g. James Patterson, etc.) Language/culture, as discussed here, is one way, but what other ways do you use to “Discover” books?
One way is to keep up with the new releases from independent publishers like Lee & Low. Another is through blogs and following people on Twitter who are also watching for diverse lit. Lee & Low had a post about this http://blog.leeandlow.com/2014/03/21/where-can-i-find-great-diverse-childrens-books/.
I know I have tried to follow more people on Twitter who have a different perspective than I have. In doing that, I hear about books I would have missed otherwise.
Please visit the International Children’s Digital Library http://en.childrenslibrary.org/ (sponsored by University of Maryland), a great FREE online resource with 4,000+ kids’ books in 61 languages (many available in multiple languages).
The authors & illustrators allow free access so that more children can read/ be read to in their home languages.
ICDL is always looking for volunteer translators so that more books can be presented in multiple languages.
This collection is also wonderful for older students reading to younger siblings in home language and for those learning languages other than English. Stunning illustrations are great as writing prompts and story starters.
**Katy Manck, Librarian-at-large
Treasurer & GiggleIT Project team – International Association of School Librarianship
Yes! I have used this resource, but not often enough. I need to promote it more with students and staff. Thanks for the reminder.
Thank you for sharing all this. I would have liked to have been a fly on the wall for the day you read to the children in Hmong. I once made an attempt to read in Castilian (well, I knew Spanish…I thought I could do it) and the native speakers were so happy to correct me and help me out! Maybe a little too happy at times. But it is amazing when kids see other cultures – and their own culture – represented. I think of the first times I really connected with a character in a book, and I hope every child gets moments like that! Thanks for helping that happen!
I have to say, I was glad that I only had to read some of the words that were Hmong scattered through the English text. It was a fun and memorable experience.
I have taken some Hmong classes since then, so my reading has improved since that first time, but I still appreciate my resident experts. 🙂
Reblogged this on Deep Blue Readers and commented:
Originally posted at Nerdy Book Club. This discussion is relevant to the Twin Cities community, but also to recent coverage in The New York Times and elsewhere about ensuring publishers make further efforts to embrace stories that reflect a variety of cultural perspectives and diverse characters.
Thanks for reblogging. 🙂
This is such an important post, Crystal. Thank you for sharing, and in addition, it’s wonderful that commenters are also sharing other resources. Thanks for the link. I am just reading and reviewing some Latino books today for Goodreads. When I find a book in Spanish and English, I pass it on to our Spanish teacher. We don’t have many people of other cultures in our school, but a few. I think the librarian and I should see what’s available and what’s needed.
Yes! And what I found is that everyone can benefit from bilingual materials. It doesn’t mean we need hundreds of them when there is no population represented, but having a good sampling of them is helpful for all students to experience. They may not always live in a place where only one language is used. I like showing them how bilingual books work and even sampling the language. If I cannot speak it at all like Urdu or Chinese, we at least listen to a snippet of the language from somewhere online so we can hear what it sounds like. Some of the texts I have because they are only available in a bilingual format so we would miss out on the story if I don’t buy it that way like Maria Had a Liitle Llama (Spanish/English) or The Swirling Hijab (Urdu/English) and I welcome the second language.
Thank you so much for highlighting diverse multicultural books and keeping them front and center! I’m excited to read your picks!
You’re welcome and I hope you enjoy them. 🙂
Pingback: Latin@s in Kid Lit at the Library: Interviews with Fellow Librarians | Latin@s in Kid Lit