How to use this Page

Setting is an integral part to story, and creating bookmaps can help readers visualize a story, whether informational or fictional. Bookmapping: Lit Trips and Beyond (2011 International Society for Technology in Education) by Terence W. Cavanaugh and Jerome Burg is divided into 12 chapters, defining the concept of bookmapping and how it can enhance classroom instruction including collaborative and multi-disciplinary learning, as well as using existing bookmaps and creating one’s own. While bookmaps can be low-tech, this book focuses on ways to incorporate technology such as Google Earth. By the way, Burg is the founder of Google Lit Trips.

Bookmapping: Lit Trips and Beyond is geared toward classroom application although one could use the technology and activity in a public library setting. Have you used bookmapping? If so, how?

Whether you have a large school group or a small gathering, participatory stories are a great way to involve everyone in the storytelling experience. Tell Along Tales! Playing with Participation Stories by Dianne de Las Casas (Libraries Unlimited, 2011) offers helpful advice as well as 25 stories that lend themselves to audience participation. She shares how to tell a story and various types and techniques of audience participation. Audience management strategies such has “warms-ups,” “keep-ups,” and “settle-downs” are also discussed. This book is designed for public librarians, school media specialists, camp counselors, and anyone else who may want to add more audience participation to school-age storytime or storytelling sessions.

Amy E. Spaulding‘s The Art of Storytelling: Telling Truths through Telling Stories (Scarecrow Press, 2011) divides into four parts: Telling Truth, Telling Stories; How to Become a Storyteller; Why Bother Learning and Telling Stories?; and Farewell. Spaulding writes in a conversational tone in which I felt as though she was speaking directly to me as she encourages readers to tell stories, especially traditional stories. She emphasizes getting to know not only the stories but to understand the culture from which the story comes so that the story/culture is treated with respect.

The book contains a Storiography, a bibliography of story collections and a webliography. At the end of each chapter, she includes exercises to help one on his/her journey to becoming a storyteller.

While the examples in Fundamentals of Library Supervision by Joan Giesecke and Beth McNeil (American Library Association Editions, 2010, 2nd ed.) are in the academic realm, there is plenty of helpful information for all librarians who have or are interested in having a supervisory role.

The authors address topics such as communication skills, the art of motivation, hiring/interviewing, managing performance, and managing meetings. They also discuss the differences among the different generations of employees. As the authors state in the book’s preface, “Management used to be simple. The manager or supervisor told employees what to do and employees did what they were told. That world does not exist today….Managers need to balance production goals with concern for people issues in a continually changing setting” (ix).

If you are a supervisor or preparing to be a supervisor, what resources have been helpful to you?

Interested in trying your hand at book reviews? Kathleen T. Horning‘s From Cover to Cover: Evaluating and Reviewing Children’s Books (Collins/HarperCollins, 2010, revised edition) is a good place to start. Horning shares and defines literary terminology along with many examples from children’s literature. She poses lots of questions for would-be reviewers to consider, helping the reader move from a personal response to a critical approach.

Reviewers of children literature read, reread, take notes, check facts. As Horning asserts, “A good review will briefly describe the contents, scope, and style of a book; critically assess its quality; and suggest its potential audience” (p. 173) That’s a great deal to do within 100 to 400 words.

Do you review children’s books? If so, what resources have helped you?

by Teresa Walls

Several years ago, I offered a Jazz Appreciation program for children and their families. We had a great time reading Charlie Parker Played Be Bop and Mysterious Thelonious, both by Chris Raschka, playing along to jazz recordings with rhythm sticks, and scat singing.

The Smithsonian offers Smithsonian Jazz Class (http://www.smithsonianjazz.org/class/jc_start.asp), a place to “develop your jazz chops” with lesson plans and worksheets to go with thirty-one recordings by jazz artists including Ella Fitzgerald, Miles Davis and more.

PBS Kids has Jazz Kids (http://pbskids.org/jazz/index.html) which offers an interactive timeline.

April is Jazz Appreciation Month. Jazz it up!

As we begin a new year, many of us think of resolutions and goals. Thanks to the ACPL Kids Blog, I learned about Laura, a nine-year-old girl who is in the process of completing one of her goals: reading all of the Newbery winners. Laura has her own blog where she shares her thoughts about the books, and she would love to know what other readers, especially other kids, think about the award-winning books. Thanks, Laura, for sharing your blog (http://lauramitolife.blogspot.com/) with us!

Wishing you all a wonderful new year,
Teresa Walls
ALSC Blog Manager

Margarita Engle is the author of the 2006 Pura Belpré Medal Winner, The Poet Slave of Cuba: A Biography of Juan Francisco Manzano, and The Surrender Tree, which received the 2009 Pura Belpré Medal as well as a 2009 Newbery Honor.

Henry Holt Books for Young Readers is a division of MacMillan which provides a wonderful profile page of Ms. Engle. One of my favorite stories is how her mother and father met in Cuba. Since neither could speak the other’s language, they communicated with each other through drawing pictures.

On ALSC’s Pura Belpré page, the 2009 Belpré Committee Chair Claudette McLinn remarks, “Engle’s prose breathes life into each character, and her rich use of language catapults the reader into the jungles of Cuba. The engaging story keeps the reader racing through the pages of history.”

I was thrilled to attend the 2009 Pura Belpré Celebración. I’m pleased to share with you a portion of Ms. Engle’s beautiful acceptance speech.

excerpted portions of Engle’s Pura Belpré acceptance speech for The Surrender Tree

– posted by Teresa Walls, ALSC member and ALSC Blog manager

I’m putting together a pecha kucha (a 6-minute powerpoint presentation of 20 slides, 20 seconds for each) to be shared at the Allen County (IN) Public Library Camp. Patricia Ross Conover’s “Quilt It” project from her book, Technology Projects for Library Media Specialists and Teachers is my inspiration. Speaking of library camps, I wish I lived closer to the Darien Library (CT) so I could have attended the Darien KidLibCamp 2009. The participants created a PB Works wiki and jotted notes about their various participant-led sessions. Thanks to them for that!

With the wonders of blogs and wikis and social networking (such as ALA Connect), we also have lots of virtual places to gather where we can help each other piece together something with purpose — focusing on exceptional library service to children.

At the Membership Pavilion in the Exhibit Hall at the ALA 2009 Annual Conference, April Roy, member of the ALSC Early Childhood Programs and Services Committee presented the new brochure and announced the new product line for the ALSC Born to Read initiative during a Saturday Membership 101 Program.

April shared the new design which offers quick tips about how to share books with your baby, includes a book list, and stresses that talking to and reading to babies increases their language development and understanding. As the parent of a 7-week-old daughter, April knows how busy expectant and new parents are and how overwhelmed they can feel by all of the reading material given to them. The new design is crisp and uncluttered with the headings “Read,” “Share,” “Talk,” and “Play.” Some of the tips are:

• Read to your baby every day. Set aside a special time, such as before bed.
• Read to your baby in short amounts whenever you have time–while you’re in line at the grocery store or waiting for a bottle to warm.
• Read or tell stories in the language you know best.
• Attend a baby story time at the library. Ask your librarian for help finding books, music, and toys.
• Choose books with bold colors, simple words, pictures of baby faces, and textured pages.
• Read with expression. Vary the tone of your voice.
• Point to pictures and talk about them.
• Chant nursery rhymes and add actions.
• Point out and name animals, household objects, people, colors, and shapes everywhere, all the time.
• Respond to your baby’s babbling. Laugh, babble, and talk with her.
• Share books when you and your baby are both in a good mood. Move on to a new activity when your baby loses interest.
• Use reading time to bond with your baby. Cuddle with your baby on your lap and let her hold the book.

After her presentation, April talked with me a bit more about how her library has purchased bundles of the new brochure as part of a grant they have received from a local memorial fund. With these monies, the Kansas City Public Library gives books and Born to Read brochures to local women’s clinics. Speaking of her own experience reading with her baby, April stated, “It’s a fun time for us. When she’s in a good, happy mood, reading is the perfect thing to do.”

The committee continues to work on revamping the Born to Read web site and program material. ALSC members are encouraged to volunteer for ALSC committees as we work to provide exceptional library service to all children. For a committee volunteer form, visit the ALSC Web Site and click on the link “ALSC Wants You!” to download the form.

Last evening I attended the Booklist Books for Youth Forum where Russell Freedman, Jean Feiwel, Candace Fleming, and Deborah Hopkinson discussed their stories behind their Lincoln books. I jotted some notes while each was speaking:

Russell Freedman, author of Lincoln: A Photobiography:

• “There have always been more books about Abraham Lincoln than anyone could read over several lifetimes.”
• “I grew up in the cherry tree era of the children’s biography. My favorite example of invented dialogue comes from the Abraham Lincoln story in Childhoods of Famous Americans: ‘Books!’ said his father. ‘Always books. What is all this reading going to do for you?’ ‘Why I’m going to be president.’ Such cardboard characters.”
• Shared that a source from the 1930s stated that Lincoln was in such grief over the death of his son Willie that he twice had his son exhumed to see his face. “I couldn ‘t find another source to confirm the story so I dropped it from the book, but I always wondered if it was true.”
• “The man is more interesting than the myth.”

Jean Feiwel, editor of Lincoln Shot! A President’s Life Remembered:

• “Most discouraging words heard around the world: Children won’t read nonfiction.”
• “We must prize and protect nonfction.”
• “We wanted an unconventional visual book. We debated format for over a year. We were concerned about real-life issue of shelving in bookstores and libraries but decided the controversial way to go was look of original period newspaper.”
• “Let’s make the New York Times have a nonfiction for children list. And the National Book Award.”

Candance Fleming, author of The Lincolns:

• “Where’s Mary in the old story?”
• “Add to the old story and make it new, to question the history that we already know and to maybe turn it into a new story.”
  “History for me the small moments, dinner table discussions, recipes and shopping lists.”
• “Show them [young people] the human moments that lead up to the big moments.”
• She also shared her family’s secret title for the book, but really the story is best in her telling of it, so I’ll leave you to wonder.

Deborah Hopkinson, author of Abe Lincoln Crosses a Creek: A Tall, Thin Tale:

• She quoted Sam Wineburg and referenced the Why Historical Thinking Matters website.
• “Today’s children spell library G-O-O-G-L-E. Informational literacy is a must.”
• “History: the only kind of time travel that exists.”

I’m uncertain how frequently I will blog during the 2009 American Library Association’s annual conference. I will attempt to give an overview of my daily activities while I’m there. However, don’t be surprised if you don’t read any entries from me until Wednesday. Special thanks to all the folks who have offered to blog about their conference experience! I’m sure I’m not the only one who is looking forward to reading what you did and learned.

For people who subscribe to Twitter, the hashtags #ala2009 and #ala09 are being used by some who will “tweet” the conference.

I hope to see you in Chicago!

Teresa Walls
Manager, ALSC Blog

Yes, summer is almost here, a perfect time to plan how to promote your library’s research databases this fall.

As I begin my plan, I’m thinking:

• Use them myself. Keep a notebook. Share what I learn with colleagues and patrons.
• Offer classes and pathfinders for each database.
• Provide individual appointments for students, parents and teachers to demonstrate the use of the databases available, focusing on their particular topic(s) of interest.
• Partner with school media specialists and teachers in which we focus on PROCESS of research over the product, to celebrate what we learn along the way.

What research databases are available at your library? Do you currently promote their use? If so, how?

The Allen County (IN) Public Library (ACPL) has created this flier, “Follow the CAR,” to encourage adults to follow the child’s lead when talking and reading to infants and toddlers. CAR means to:

Comment and wait*
Ask questions and wait*
Respond by adding a little more

*Waiting gives the child time to respond.

Librarians model and share ideas with caregivers during storytimes, but not all caregivers can schedule their library visits to coincide with library storytimes. This is one more way to spread the word of the importance of reading to and engaging with infants and toddlers. For a larger view of the flier, click on the thumbnail car images. The flier includes the URL for the ACPL Everybody Reads resource page, http://www.acpl.lib.in.us/children/everybodyreads.html.

Another resource to share with caregivers is the ALSC Born to Read Initiative. To visit that resource page, go to ALSC –> Initiatives –> Born To Read.

How about leading a letter parade at your next preschool or family storytime? You could give everyone the same letter. You could mix it up and give everyone a different letter. Maybe a vowel parade? Or only certain consonants? Or blends? During the parade, you could make the sounds of the letters or call out the letter names or say words that start with that letter or end with that letter. Children could take turns leading the parade. They could carry hand-lettered signs that they make with their caregivers or a letter that they can trace with their fingers. Or skip the fine-motor skills and move right into large motor skills by parading in letter shapes that you put on your floor, perhaps with masking tape or carpet squares. Take the parade outside the program room, maybe even outside your department or even your building (if you have enough caregivers along and the appropriate space). Add some marching music if you want.

Ah, I love a parade!

Hello everyone!I was thrilled to listen to the interview with Dr. Jaime Campbell Naidoo on the work that he is doing to reach out to Latino children, and inspired to take advantage of Teresa Wells’ gracious invitation to participate in this forum to let you know about my own outreach efforts in this area.     

I know many of you, but please allow me to introduce myself to those of you who don’t know me: I have over 10 years of experience in Latino publishing, most recently as Executive Editor at HarperCollins Children’s Books, where I managed the children’s division of the Latino imprint, Rayo. Prior to that, I was Children’s Reviews Editor at Críticas magazine, published by School Library Journal. I’ve worked for a number of publishers, both on a full time basis and as a freelance consultant, on English and Spanish language books.  

After leaving Harper, I decided that I would take all of the knowledge I have gathered during my career in Latino publishing and share it with others interested in Latino authors and books. This led me to launch VOCES (http://adrianadominguez.blogspot.com/); a blog that focuses on providing readers with what I call “an insider’s perspective” of the Latino book market. The blog breaks news on the market, highlights Latino books and authors that deserve notice, and provides relevant information on issues that affect Latinos—for instance, I recently posted some clips from ABC’s “We the People” series, which explored the demographic growth of Latinos in the US, and its impact on the country’s culture, and future. ALSC members will be interested to know that my latest post is about El día de los niños/El día de los libros! I have worked very closely with ALSC to promote Dia in the past, and I plan on continuing to do so via this new medium. I recently added a calendar of book-related events from all across the country, such as readings, workshops, and conferences that I encourage you to explore as well. I would love it if you would submit your own events so that I may list them in the calendar.    

I want to share this blog with you because through my work with ALA, ALSC, and REFORMA, I have become fully aware of the extents that librarians will go to in order to keep informed about books for the sake of their patrons! I hope that this blog provides you with some of the information that you thirst for, in particular as it relates to the Latino market, since that is a sometimes a challenging area to learn more about. So, please subscribe and support this blog and what it tries to do. And provide feedback—I am always looking for ways to make it more useful to readers. This blog’s goal is to become the place where Latino authors and books are the #1 priority. We need such a place, particularly during these tough times, that have been particular hard on the Latino publishing industry. Thank you in advance for your support; I look forward to seeing you there! 

Download the podcast.

Episode 9

Episode 9: Outreach to Latino Populations

The Latinos are the fastest growing minority population in the United States. Dr. Jamie Campbell Naidoo predicts that within 20 to 30 years, they are going to be the majority. In this 24-minute podcast, ALSC member Dr. Naidoo discusses

• what led him to research and teach diversity and outreach
• the importance of intercultural literature and self-identification
• information about the Latino Children’s Literature Conference
• ¡Imagínense!, a multifaceted program combining current research and practice to assist librarians, teachers, and other educators in meeting the literacy needs of Latino children and adolescents. The Imaginense Libros blog is http://imaginenselibros.blogspot.com/.

Below is an edited transcript of the podcast:

ALSC Blog: Hello and welcome to episode 9 of the ALSC Blog Podcast. My name is Teresa Walls. I am the manager of the ALSC Blog. In today’s podcast, member Jamie Campbell Naidoo kindly spoke with me regarding library service to Latino children as well as the upcoming 2nd annual celebration of Latino Children’s literature to be held April 24 and 25, 2009, at the University of South Carolina in partnership with the University of Alabama. I will let Mr. Naidoo introduce himself.

Jamie Naidoo: My name is Jamie Naidoo. I am a assistant professor at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and I’m in the School of Library and Information Studies there. I’ve been there since August. Prior to that, I was at the University of South Carolina’ s library school. In both places, I teach diversity in library and children’s library services and young adult library services. I’ve been an elementary school librarian before and also a children’s librarian in a public library.

ALSC Blog: Let’s talk a little bit about library service to Latino children. What has led you to this particular interest?

Jamie Naidoo: It started when I was an elementary school librarian in a suburb of the Birmingham area of Alabama. The school I worked at was preK through 2. The first year I was there we had very few Latino children. I’d say maybe 20 or less. Then three years later, we had gone from the 20 to over 150, almost 160, 170. We had this huge increase all of sudden of Latino children and it was interesting to see the shift in dynamics within the school.

Most teachers didn’t speak Spanish. The current ESL [English as a Second Language] teacher didn’t speak Spanish. And nobody really knew how to educate these children since they didn’t speak English and most teachers didn’t speak Spanish. And, so they hired an ESL teacher who spoke Spanish and got two ESL aides who spoke Spanish and then another part-time ESL teacher who spoke Spanish. They started vamping up their ESL education program. I took the opportunity then to start working with the ESL teacher to help her plan programs. She wasn’t very well versed in children’s literature, so I would give her books and stuff. I remember the day I gave her a book by Gary Soto, a picture book by Gary Soto, and she came back later that day and was very excited because her Latino boys were finally connecting with a book. They were recognizing the culture that was in the book. She was excited that they were making connections with a book, which they hadn’t before.

While I was at the school, I heard a lot of negative comments about Latinos. You know, things such as “Why do they speak Mexican? Why don’t they speak English?” I had teachers who would say things like, “I can’t pronounce the name Jorge so I’ll call him George just because I can’t pronounce that name.” And, I think it was just a lot of general misunderstanding of the Latino population.

So, I realized that there needed to be a lot more education to the educators, that there is diversity in the population. And that you shouldn’t see these children as a burden but you should really be reaching out to them. I was thinking that I could not imagine leaving my country and going somewhere else where I didn’t know the language and sending my children to a school where they didn’t know the language and I didn’t know the language and hoping that they thrive and survive.

The majority of the children we had were from Mexico. The more I worked with them, I could see that the families were very motivated and very dedicated. They were the ones who would show up for parent/teacher conferences and always wanted to help in their child’s education, they just didn’t know how. And, I remember at about that time I was reading a book called, Dirty Girls Social Club which is by Alisa Valdes-Rodriquez. It’s basically like a Latino Sex in the City. I was reading that book which is a conglamoration of about five Latino women, but they were from different cultural backgrounds. One was Puerto Rican, one was Cuban, one was Mexican, one was from the Caribbean. It really hit home that wow! there is all this diversity And, here I am, someone who is interested in helping these children and I don’t really stop and think about the diversity, and I bet most other people don’t stop and think about the diversity within the Latino populations.

The more I thought about that, I was wanting to start working on my PhD, so I thought I’d focus my PhD with school library service to Latino population. But the more I thought about it, I realized that our concept of other cultures or of things that are different really begins well before we get into school. Through picture books that we read or that parents read to us, we start forming our understanding of different cultures and different things. So, I decided I should probably be focusing on picture books before I really started focusing on library service in schools, and then looking at library services in public libraries as well. All that to say, that’s why I started looking at picture books before I started looking at library services.

Currently, the majority Latino population are Mexican but that is followed by quickly by a large percentage of Puerto Ricans and Cubans and Dominicans. And it kind of goes on down from there.

When I was in South Carolina before. it was kind of a competition between South Carolina and North Carolina about who had the fastest growing Latino population because the Latino South which is Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and the Carolinas, and Tennessee, has the fastest growing Latino population. A lot are migrating from the West or emigrating in, and going to live in the South, so that’s where a high population is, in the southern states.

The term multicultural is becoming more passé. Multicultural is meaning all these different cultures. Intercultural is trying to make connections among all these many cultures, not seeing them as different separate things but really drawing connections between the cultures which is really very important, that you need to understand other cultures. And, so if you are focusing on different cultures separately but you don’t ever really talk about the importance of learning about cultures beyond your own then you aren’t making any progress. That’s the term also used more often now in children’s literature, talking about diverse populations, intercultural is being used more because it talks not just about multicultural literature here in the United States but international children’s literature from other countries too. So you are talking about cultures in the United States and in countries around the world.

ALSC Blog: O.K., then that helps also, instead of separating things out, instead of saying today’s storytime we are going to focus on this culture, to look at having services that incorporate cultures and how they are connected in one storytime perhaps, not making it…. I don’t know if I’m making sense.

Jamie Naidoo: You are making perfect sense. When I go around doing workshops and things like that, I say we shouldn’t just, during Hispanic Heritage Month, read a couple books about Mexico or about the Latino culture, have a big fiesta, break a piñata, have a couple tacos and then never talk about the Latino culture again until the following year. Too often as educators and librarians, we focus on Black History Month or Asian Heritage Month or Hispanic Heritage Month, and we separate things out into neat little boxes instead of incorporating different cultures into everyday things that we do. These children are here with us every single day not just during Black History Month, not just during Asian Heritage Month or Hispanic Heritage Month.

Self-identification is very important for children because if as a child you grow up and you never see your culture represented in the books you read or the books that librarians and teachers share with you, then you may start thinking that your culture is not important, either it’s not important enough to write about in books or it’s not important for educators to share with you. The same is true then too if your culture is represented but it is negatively represented or there is misinformation about your culture in books that teachers and librarians share then you may feel lessened or you may have a conflict in yourself. I mean, if you know that all people who are Latino aren’t from Mexico but your teacher or librarian insists that when sharing stories about Latinos that they’re always from Mexico and let’s have a taco, and you realize, “Yeah, I’m a Latino, but I’m not from Mexico and I eat things besides tacos,” you might feel a little conflict between who you really are and who librarians and teachers say you are. It’s really important that children see accurate portrayals of their culture in books that they read.

A lot of the research that I do and have started doing has been with books that have won the Belpré Award and the Americas Award which are two awards for Latino children’s literature because for a long time there weren’t books about Latinos and then the ones that did come out had stereotypes, so the Americas Award was created and the Belpré Award was created to celebrate books about the Latino cultures. Librarians assume that they are all great and wonderful. They use them without really stopping to think what’s really the content because sometimes librarians and teachers figure if something won an award it has to be a great and wonderful book. I mean, there are books that sometimes in the past may have won the Caldecott that might have been about the Latino culture but wasn’t necessarily a good positive representation of the culture. At the same time, if teachers only shared the Americas books or only shared the Belpré books, they may only represent to their children portions of the Latino culture, not the full gamut of the diversity within the Latino cultures.

ALSC Blog: I’m thinking about just introducing the books, like someone being afraid, “Oh, I don’t know if this book is an accurate portrayal.” And, at the same time, especially with talking about self-identification, a chance to talk with the children about “What do you do in your family?” or to give them a chance to talk about their experiences. Because, like you said, even within how a culture is represented in a picture book might not be necessarily how your family is, because even if you are part of that culture, your family may have its own individual nuances to it.

Jamie Naidoo: Exactly, like I’ve said before in different talks that I give, in the United States we like to compartmentalize things too much. We have the label “Asian,” the label “Latino” or “Hispanic,” the label “African American,” and we expect people to fit in nice little boxes, and they don’t. Just because you are reading a book about Latinos doesn’t mean that represents all Latinos, or a book about African-Americans represents all African Americans. So, yeah, when you’re reading a book it definitely opens an opportunity, and even if you are reading a book about families, because maybe the children don’t have a mom or dad, or they live with an extended family. So definitely, read a book and talk about the differences that children have in their own lives and how that one book can’t represent the whole culture.

ALSC Blog: Let’s talk a little bit about outreach from public libraries and school media centers. In your work are you looking at that portion of it or at this point are you mostly focusing on the literature?

Jamie Naidoo: I think you can’t focus on either one or the other. It all goes hand in hand. When I was in South Carolina, I did a study on how libraries were serving Latino children in South Carolina and just looking at their collections and programs that they offered and things like that. And then, when I was in South Carolina, I went around and talked to school librarians and children librarians about creating programs and services to the Latino community, and how you can create these programs when you don’t speak Spanish when maybe all the Latinos in your community do speak Spanish. I talk about mainly if you don’t speak Spanish and you want to reach out to your community through your school library or your public library, one of the best places to go first is to your Latino community. If you are intimidated by going to parents of Latino children that you know then look for Hispanic leaders in the community, maybe educators themselves or business owners who may have a key lead-in to the Latino community. If they can’t help you, they may know somebody who can help you reach out and plan your programs in the community or get Latinos to come to your library to partake of some of the outreach and services that you offer.

The Día program is a great way for both school libraries and public libraries to celebrate the Latino culture and reach out to the Latino community. Pat Mora started the idea of Día in the United States. ALSC has readily adopted that along with REFORMA, and now every year on April 30th, libraries around the country are celebrating Latino literature, Latino families, and Latino literacy. That’s a great way to start reaching out the Latino community, but it doesn’t have to be just April 30th. You could have Día activities throughout the whole year, but that’s one quick and easy way to think about reaching out the Latino community. There’s tons of free information online about creating Día programs. Like I said that information translates to the whole year, so teachers and librarians should not use the excuse that “That’s just something else I have to plan for and I don’t have time for that.” Well, O.K., sure, maybe you’re not creative and you don’t have time to plan programs, or extra programs as you might see it. Well, there are plenty of things to be found online that have been tried and tested. Use those instead. Take a Dia activity and include it in your weekly storytime and when you talk about other cultures.

We mentioned this earlier that sometimes libraries tend to focus on cultures on specific times of year or just on celebrations. And that’s not necessarily a negative thing, it can be a positive, especially when it comes to celebrations. You can have a Day of the Dead storytime or party and read some stories about Day of the Dead. Have children talk about some of their relatives who have passed on or have some family members come in and talk about what Day of the Dead is and create displays and things like that. One of the libraries that was in South Carolina that I worked with had a Latino parent group of mothers that were like an advisory board for the children’s department. They helped the children’s department create programs and build collections that would reach out to the Latino community. I think that was very, very important in the success of that library reaching the Latino community.

It’s very important to know about the Latino culture. Something I also tell librarians is to learn, to know just some of the things that identify the Latino culture, like they like to do things as a family, as a group, so if you plan a program it’s important to plan family programs not age specific programs. If the whole family can participate, you are more likely to have more participation. I tell my classes when I teach diversity, you can have the wonderful collections, you can plan all these wonderful programs and services, but if nobody comes, then was it successful? Why did you do all that if nobody comes? You really want to market your program and think about your community and know what your community make-up is and plan programs and services for Latinos that mirror those.

ALSC Blog: You started the Latino Children’s Literature Conference with Dr. Juila Lopez-Robertson, an education professor at the University of South Carolina’s College of Education. You had your first conference last year. What’s in store with that for the future?

Jamie Naidoo: The conference this year is April 24 and 25. We have Sonia Nieto who is a Puerto Rican children’s literature and multicultural education scholar as our academic keynote. Then we have Lulu Delacre and Lucia Gonzalez and Maya Christina Gonzalez as our authors who are coming this year. Each year we have at least two Latina or Latino authors or illustrators for children. We would like to add more each year, so this year we have three. We have some local authors who come as well. There’s storytelling and there’s breakout sessions related to library services to Latinos and then also keeping the education standpoint with educating Latinos in the classroom. We always have a component that is community outreach related to Dia. This year Lulu is doing a Dia program at one of the local schools, and we’ll be giving out free copies of one of her books.

Last year and this year it was in South Carolina, in Columbia, South Carolina. But now since I moved to University of Alabama, we didn’t want to end the conference so we decided that we would keep the conference in the South, but not just South Carolina. We’ll keep it going back and forth between South Carolina and Alabama. The third annual one will be in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, next year. Then the fourth one will go back to South Carolina, which we see as being a good thing because the Latino South incorporates, we almost have Alabama and South Carolina being on the edges, on each edge, boxing in the Latino South so it allows educators from each side of that to attend the conference that maybe they wouldn’t be able to attend at a distance especially with a lot of funding being cut for travel.

But, it’s a great and wonderful event and it is a national conference. We hope to continue to grow it each year.

ALSC Blog: You’ve just started a blog?

Jamie Naidoo: Yes. There’s a Latino literacy iniaitive called ¡Imaginense! Libros which means Just Imagine Books. It will eventually be a really dynamic website. I’ve been putting it off, putting it off, thinking once I get the time and get a webmaster then I’ll start creating this dynamic website which is going to be a virtual evaluation collection of Latino children’s books. I will have an advisory board of Latino children’s literature scholars from all across the United States. That they, along with me, will read the books and write evaluations of them. We’ll evaluate the Spanish. It will be one-stop place to go for, as a librarian, when you are thinking about purchasing books about the Latino culture in Spanish, you’ll be able to go to this website, search it, read our reviews, and know whether or not this is a good book.

So, this was going to be a dynamic website, but then I realize that I don’t need to wait until I get the website up. I went ahead and created a blogspot for it. I have some ideas up there now. Especially with Criticas ending, there is definitely a need for reviews of books about Latinos, especially children’s books.

ALSC Blog: We’ll include the URL to your blog in the transcript of this podcast. [The URL is http://imaginenselibros.blogspot.com/] Let’s go ahead and end our conversation. Do you mind sharing some final words with us?

Jamie Naidoo: I think it’s really important that people start really thinking about library service to Latinos. They are the fastest growing population in the United States. Even if you aren’t serving Latinos in your library now, you will be soon. When I do my workshops and presentations, I say you just can’t say that I don’t have any Latinos in my community now, so I don’t have to worry about it. You need to have those books in your library to teach others about the culture and foster cultural understanding. It’s important to incorporate those into the programs you have now. And be ready for when you do have a large Latino population in your community because if you don’t have Latinos now, you will. Jump on the opportunity now as opposed to waiting.

posted by Teresa Walls

As a child, I had subscriptions to Ranger Rick and Cricket, both of which I enjoyed immensely. I don’t recall a children’s periodical collection at my local library when I was growing up. Lately, my son and I have been checking out the periodicals at our local branch library. They have a nice collection which is in great shape. In fact, several magazines from 2005 look brand new. While American Girl never seems to be on the shelf, other gems are apparently overlooked.

So, I want to ask you a few questions. What periodicals do you make available for your patrons? Why? Is it a collection you promote? If so, how do you promote it?

posted by Teresa Walls

Have you read How Computer Games Help Children Learn by David Williamson Shaffer? I have just begun. Already, there is plenty of food for thought, especially regarding games that allow children to role-play, moving beyond rote memorization. I imagine many of us who became librarians like trivia and random facts. But, really, where does that get you? O.K., perhaps on Jeopardy.

Shaffer discusses SodaConstructor as a “free, Java-based spring-mass modeling system–and when described that way it sounds like it might be about as interesting as a simulation of growing grass” (p. 42). I hadn’t heard of it, but I am inspired to learn more. It is a project created by Soda Creative Ltd. (a team of artists, developers and entreprenurs) and supported by NESTA, the United Kingdom’s National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts. Since being mentioned in Shaffer’s book, things have changed a bit (isn’t that the way with life on the World Wide Web?), but registration is now open if you want to play.

Shaffer and other researchers contribute to a blog, Epistemic Games: Building the Future of Education where they “welcome questions, insights, and comments on education, gaming, media literacy, and other related topics.” The Epistemic Games Research Group is housed within the Educational Psychology Department and the Wisconsin Center for Education Research at the School of Education, University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Dilys Evans, author of Show & Tell, states in her author’s note that this book is not a “best of” list. Instead, she has selected twelve different artists to showcase the variety of fine art in children’s book illustration. According to the blurb on the book jacket, Evans has advised Caldecott committees in the past. By writing this book, her hope is to “help all of us who value children’s books to find a universal language to use to talk about art on the page; a vocabulary that helps describe this unique form of artistic expression with greater clarity and common understanding. And that we will then take that vocabulary and use it to explore the many other wonderful books that are on our shelves.” (p. 7)

Evans does an excellent job discussing the selected illustrators and describing their works to offer interested readers ways to move beyond “I like it” to actually discussing how the illustrations work within a story, telling the story, enhancing the story. On page 92, she writes of David Shannon and includes questions that are important when considering illustration in children’s books:

As we look at the pictures in this book, we’re not just looking at them, we are looking into them, to find the story. How does color set the mood and emotion? Is the line bold, pointed, sharp-edged, and energetic for action? Or is it thin, curving, and subtle for quiet motion or stillness?

These choices affect our perception of the scene. As does the overall composition of the picture. There will be signs of direction, perhaps the moving left to right to keep the pages turning. Or at an important moment in the story, notice how the composition may be designed to stop the action right there and cause the reader to pause just a moment.

If you are curious about what kind of conversations might be taking place during an ALSC Caldecott committee meeting, read this book. If you know that illustration is a vital part of children’s literature but don’t feel you have the vocabulary to stress its importance, read this book.

Molly Bang’s Picture This: How Pictures Work is another resource to offer you a better understanding of artistic technique and visual art in general. Bang’s book has been used in mock Caldecott Election programs that I have attended. Are there any books you have found helpful in discussions of children’s book illustration?

I just learned from a post on AL Direct that this week is Geography Awareness Week, which is especially fitting for me since I have spent the first part of this week in The Bahamas, a place I knew nearly nothing about until my friend suggested we spend a few days there.

The National Geographic Society is one of the organizations promoting Geography Awareness Week. One of the resources listed includes the National Geographic Bee, a competition open to grades 4 through 8. Registration is to be completed by the school principal, and there is a $70 registration fee. The registration deadline for the 2009 competition has been extended to December 12, 2008.

National Geographic’s web site also offers the GeoBee Challenge where ten questions from the National Geographic Bee are posted each day. It IS challenging, although I did not do as poorly as I feared I might. (As an aside, one of today’s questions had the Bahamas as an answer option.) The GeoBee Challenge might be a fun way to highlight some of the material in the 900s of your library’s collection.

Have you or your colleagues offered any library programming to feature geography? If so, we would love to read about it.

Eli Neiburger is the Information Access and Systems Manager of Ann Arbor (Mich.) District Library (AADL) and he was one of the presenters at the 2008 ALA TechSource Gaming, Learning and Libraries Symposium. After his Pokémon Primer session, I now have a better understanding of the complex system of stewardship, strategy and organization that is Pokémon. I didn’t realize that there are over 500 varieties of Pokémon. I did know that the kids who love Pokémon know a lot about them.

During his session, two participants went head-to-head in the Pokémon Battle Revolution using the Wii. This is the game featured during AADL’s monthly Pokémon Tournament where an average of 60 kindergartners through fifth graders gather to test their skills against other Pokémon trainers. This video is of the Pokemon Battle Revolution they held on November 23, 2007.

He said that when hosting a tournament, it’s best to use Level 50 All to equalize matches and to restrict the use of “Legendary” Pokémon (unicorns and the like) until final matches. Sometimes kids will have hacked Pokémon, usually because they traded online (not that there’s anything wrong with trading). Many collectors from other countries like to have U.S. versions and will trade with ones that have had powers altered. He begins each tournament with explanations about what a hacked one might be like and that opponents can contest a Pokémon’s ability level, but must have the consensus of five other tournament participants in order to disqualify a particular Pokémon.

Due to the popularity of the tournament, especially with the use of the big screen and the Wii, it is a first round elimination for the ones who elect to play on the big screen with a 10 minute limit per game. The participants who play wirelessly between their own DS players play the best of 10. The final rounds are played on the big screen with the Wii.

The next AADL meeting of PL2: Public Library Pokémon League is Sunday, November 30. I plan to attend. I would love to have something similar at my library.

Jon Agee is the author/illustrator of Nothing (Hyperion), an ALSC 2008 Notable Children’s Book; Terrific (Hyperion/Michael di Capua), an ALSC 2006 Notable Children’s Book; and Milo’s Hat Trick (Michael di Capua/Hyperion), an ALSC 2002 Notable Children’s Book. He lives in San Francisco.

Check out Jon’s answers to 20 Questions on his official website.

Download the podcast.

This 15-minute podcast is from a conversation between ALSC Blog Manager, Teresa Walls, and Stacy Dillon. Stacy is the lower school librarian at LREI, a private school in New York City. There are 562 students enrolled in the school as of our conversation which took place September 3, 2008. She attended and was part of a panel discussion at the 2008 ALA Diversity Leadership Institute Preconference. During our conversation, she described her school and its commitment to diversity and community, as well as some specifics from the preconference.

Mentioned in the podcast are:

• LREI’s Diversity and Community Director
• Worth the Trip
• The Brown Bookshelf
• LREI’s Diversity Bulletin Board
• Mark Winston, Ph.D.
• Patty Wong of Yolo County (CA) Library

Episode 7

Diversity

An edited transcript of our conversation is below.

ALSC Blog: Hi, I’m Teresa Walls and I’m speaking with Stacy Dillon. And Stacy is a member of ALSC and she is also the lower school librarian, — is that correct? — you go by lower, higher school, is that how you say it?

Stacy Dillon: We have early childhood, lower, middle and high school.

ALSC Blog: Describe your school and your role within the school.

Stacy Dillon: O.K. Sure, I am the lower school librarian here at LREI which stands for Little Red Elizabeth Irwin, and we are a progressive independent school located in the West Village of Manhattan. It’s relatively small. We are a campus school though. Our high school is in a different location down the street from us.

So, my responsibilities besides the general librarian responsibilities that anyone would have is the curriculum development and teaching of the first through fourth graders as well as everything librarians in a school have to do along with that: collection development, reading, reader’s advisory, and things like that.

ALSC Blog: In Anaheim, you were part of a preconference…

Stacy Dillon: The preconference which was called Diversity Leadership Institute. I was part of a panel where we were specifically talking about diversity, mission statements, and also how libraries, especially in academic settings, could support diversity efforts of the whole institution.

ALSC Blog: Let’s define diversity.

Stacy Dillon: Well, this is always a tricky thing. I was speaking with one of my colleagues about this the other day. Defining diversity is kind of hard because as soon as you really define it, chances are you are being a little exclusive. We look beyond what many people might assume. The first idea that pops into mind after “diversity” tends to be race and ethnicity, and we try to look beyond that to the hidden diversity as well with different learning styles, religion, family make-up, and things like that. So we try to encompass as much of the community as we can within our lens of diversity.

Um, I recognize that we work in a pretty unique place in that we really have a lot of support for diversity in this school, at the top, at the bottom, throughout. Our school has the position of director of diversity and community which came about, I believe it was three years ago when that position was officially formed. And that came out of a board initiative. The board of trustees also had a diversity committee there where we were looking at how we could showcase and focus our efforts a little bit better. Diversity informs the classroom in that it is a curriculum virtually on every grade level in an appropriate way. And, teachers are expected to deal with diversity issues, to teach to diversity throughout the year, we are not a school that believes in just teaching Martin Luther King through Black History month or just doing something during Hispanic History Month. It should be woven throughout the curriculum through the entire year.

ALSC Blog: How is support for diversity incorporated into everyday student life?

Stacy Dillon: Well, as I said before, it’s in the curriculum very heavily. We teach to a social justice curriculum where we try to pull out some voices that weren’t always heard, especially in the history classes as the kids get a little bit older. And we teach the kids to question as well, which is sometimes a little bit tricky. But you want them to ask and challenge some of the traditional ideas.

We have affinity groups for students and for parents and for families, so the younger kids might be part of Parents of Children of Color, where there would be activities and events specifically for those kids. And the lesbian and gay families, we have groups for their parents and activities that are based around that. Some of our biggest, most popular social events in the school are based around multiculturalism. We have a big festival that is called Karamu. That’s a celebration of everybody’s heritage, and it’s really the most popular thing in the school.

We try to make sure that kids are reflected in different ways. Books in the classroom will always be made up of different family orientations, different colors of kids, kids who come from different countries, so that kids are seeing not only themselves but also the faces and experiences of people they may not have come in contact with yet.

The four of us, we’re really lucky because we have four MLS librarians in this relatively small school. Karyn Silverman’s our high school, Jen Hubert Swan is middle school, and I, along with Jesse Karp, do the lower school. And we’re always looking through that lens. We are active in ALA which helps because a lot of books come to us, but we are also all voracious readers. When we are reading we are always looking through the lens of where is the hole in our collection, is there a hole in our collection, how can we support this curriculum on diversity, and find fiction and nonfiction for children in the classroom during the year.

We also do these book nights every year, called Librarian Book Night, and in the past we tend to choose topics of diversity as well. We did one that was called East Meets West looking at the idea of culture clash with either new immigrants trying to adjust or just different idealogies. We also did one that was all about social class and looking through the lens of social class and finding that many of the books, that you might not have thought examine social class, really do in a subtle way.

ALSC Blog: So you try to have the whole range of age?

Stacy Dillon: Yeah, for sure. From the four-year-olds, our very youngest, all the way through high school. It is challenging. We look to the smaller presses if we can. And, being in New York, we’re kind of lucky ’cause we can go around to as many bookstores as we can. But we really look to blogs as well, like blogs like Worth the Trip and the Brown Bookshelf and stuff like that to inform our collection development. as well.

ALSC Blog: I noticed your school has the Diversity Bulletin Board display and I was curious to hear a little bit more about that.

Stacy Dillon: Yeah, one of our middle school teachers had sat in a meeting a few years ago. She had visited a different school and said that their commitment to diversity in their mission was evident when they walked through the door. And the people who were on the diversity committee at the time just, I guess, really had this brainstorm about the Diversity Bulletin Board which literally is the first thing you see when you walk in through the front door of our school,

And every classroom that’s in this building, which encompasses the lower school and the middle school, is responsible for putting something up a child made, something they pulled out of their curriculum during the year that reflects diversity. So from the smallest children, you’ll see some collages in art of talking about the different ways we play or self-portraits which will just show the different impressions of who the kids are, how they see themselves. Towards the eighth grade they study Emmet Till and they might have some personal reflections in poems about him on their week. So, it’s great because it’s always changing and always so different. It really is a focal point as you walk into the school to get a real taste of what’s going on in the classroom.

ALSC Blog: What about the work you do with the teachers? Do you have set-aside times that you work with individual teachers? How does that collaboration come together?

Stacy Dillon: Well, in the lower school, their kids come to us once a week. All of the classes have library once a week, so I get a little bit of contact with the teachers then. But, it’s really up to us. We make ourselves available to them, but I also have no problem just coming into a classroom and I’ll know what their social studies curriculum is so I’m constantly looking for books that will support that. It’s a very open-door sort of school so I can wander into anyone’s classroom at any time and just sit down and listen for awhile or go through their classroom library and make suggestions. We’re constantly bringing materials to teachers and they are usually very grateful for it.

ALSC Blog: What are the challenges that you have witnessed or experienced in supporting diversity?

Stacy Dillon: One of the hard things is that we, as a school, deal with situations as soon as they pop up, so if something does come out of someone’s mouth that is degrading or is out of line with how we are thinking, we have to deal with that right away. So that’s kind of hard sometimes because sometimes you need a little bit to process it. Dealing with situations right away is a little bit of a challenge.

And also teaching kids, who don’t consider diversity to be a part of their life necessarily, about being an ally, being a straight ally, being a white ally, and how their voices can be and should be involved in the diversity discussion as well. It’s amazing when kids are guided, but given the freedom at the same time, what they rise to. It’s great to see, and that is definitely one of the rewards of working here: watching kids develop over time into these really passionate and articulate kids around issues of social justice.

ALSC Blog: All right, now let’s go ahead and move to the preconference.

Stacy Dillon: It was really, really rewarding. Looking at different issues of hiring practice and language and just the need to keep fighting the fight that people have been talking about for years. How do you recruit when kids who are coming up aren’t seeing themselves in that position? Mark Winston (he’s at UNC Chapel Hill School of Library Science) talked about that, and he talked about how if libraries aren’t institutionally making a commitment to diversity then things really aren’t going to change. So, if the whole institution isn’t making a primary effort to recruit people of color, you’re at a stagnant point.

Patty Wong, another person who was there, is from the Yolo County Library in California. She was talking about the need for looking at diversity in the widest sense regarding recruitment and advancement. She had some really interesting things to say about offering bilingual pay for people who might speak Spanish and English on the job. And to give diversity inspired sabbaticals so people would bring diversity more into their practices as well.

And it can’t be, “Oh, we are looking at diversity this year. Oh, we did that last year, let’s move on.” It’s got to be something that becomes the fabric of the actual institution. But, the mission statement, the diversity statement, is really the first place to start. It will give you something to check back to. It will keep you on track as the year goes on.

The public libraries, again, it’s making that commitment, following through and maybe having displays that might garner you some complaints but being ready to deal with the inevitable backlash that could come depending on what community you are in. There’s a lot of hidden diversity that you might not know about, and there may be people who just aren’t coming into your library because they don’t feel like it is a place for them. So once you make it more of a place for everybody, you could probably increase your patron base as well.

There’s no reason not to make some kind of a pathfinder that deals with diversity issues that you could just click to. I think that would be a nice baby step, or first step, for people to take if they don’t have a lot of support or they’re not quite sure where to start. That’s even something I would definitely do here. I’ve never made a virtual pathfinder before for the kids, but that would totally work with my third- and fourth-graders.

The other thing we do have at our school that other people might be able to spring board from, we have a diversity action plan. It’s kind of like a living, breathing document of how we’re addressing diversity, the issues that might come up and things we want to try.

ALSC Blog: Yes. Could you give us an example of something that you’re working on or toward?

Stacy Dillon: Sure. For Lower School specifically, things in the classroom like making graphs that demonstrate that we are all alike, we are all different, just to show the similarities that come along side the differences. And to make sure that we teach to the wide range of students that we have and understanding that all kids don’t learn the same way.

Then we have a newer initiative, looking at things globally, like teaching kids a little bit about global play and how they can incorporate that into their lives and noticing that there are children all over the world and we are all different but that we all play. How do we play differently? And working that into a curriculum. I guess looking at things as a global perspective too, and not getting stuck in the idea of our own neighborhood all the time.

Keeping it active and lively, and keeping the kids involved in everything makes it work here.

ALSC Blog: I think that’s an excellent way to end our conversation. I want to thank you so much, Stacy, for talking with me.

Stacy Dillon: Thank you.

The Super3 by Michael B. Eisenberg and Laura Eisenberg Robinson is a thin book with many worksheets throughout. The Super 3 are Plan, Do, Review. After reading the book, I have been thinking a great deal of the importance of empowering youngsters throughout their learning.

As the authors mention on page 15:

Another technique is to give less rather than more direction on assignments. Teachers often lead students through every step in an assignment–verbally or in writing. Sometimes it is necessary for teachers to be very direct and specific, but too often this is done without even thinking of the message being communicated. When teachers give a great deal of detail or step-by-step directions, they are doing most of the task definition or ‘planning’ work.

I have heard many complaints of teaching to the tests. The authors share how their open-ended tasks of Planning, Doing and Reviewing (the Super 3) do address learning standards and objectives.

One of our goals as librarians is to offer tools for life-long learning. It is very easy for me to focus on the Do with young learners, but the language of Plan and Review is important to share too. I hadn’t really thought of it in this way before reading this book. I like to have open-ended activities in the library programs that I plan, but these activities would mean more to children if I offer ways of sharing their planning and their own reviews of what they have created, their own evaluations of what they have done and what they have learned.