Recent news, conferences, events and more from the Diverse BookFinder team.
As our schools and libraries are closed, we at the Diverse BookFinder are trying to continue to offer access and resources related to picture books featuring BIPOC. This post will explore e-books, with a few recommended titles that you can borrow immediately (unless they’re already on loan in your library system). Through the coming weeks, […]
Read More… from For These Strange & Difficult Times: Finding Diverse Electronic Picture Books #1
This piece was co-authored by our project coordinator, Dr. Andrea Breau. Last month, we once again joined the excellent offering of Martin Luther King Jr. Day commemorative activities at Bates College, hosting the only event on the day-long program for families with young children. To our surprise, in addition to the dozen or so children […]
Read More… from Using K-3 Picture Books to Talk About Race & Racism With Children
“Any Child: Books featuring BIPOC in which race, ethnicity, tribal affiliation, culture, im/migration, and/or religious, sacred, or origin stories are not central to the story. These elements may be present, but they are not essential to the plot and could be changed without altering the storyline.” Over the next few months, we’ll be featuring a list […]
Photo Credit: Kimberly Farmer on Unsplash In October, we launched our free, online Collection Analysis Tool (CAT) — funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services — to help librarians across the nation diversify their bookshelves. A recent survey done by School Library Journal indicates that the majority of librarians feel it is “very […]
This is the first in a series of posts chronicling the places where members of our team have traveled to share the Diverse BookFinder. At the end of June, I flew to Israel at the invitation of the English Teachers Association of Israel (ETAI), to speak at a number of events during July’s “English Week.” […]
As we find ourselves in the thick of mud season (AKA spring) here in central Maine, and the trees are finally budding after a long winter, we’re excited to share our own news of growth! This coming fall, the Diverse BookFinder (DBF) will launch a free, online Collection Analysis Tool (AKA “the CAT”) to help […]
As some of you may remember, I started this year by writing a blog post about a collection development experiment I decided to undertake that was focused by this question: What if the only picture books and picture book biographies I buy for my K-3 collection only featured characters of color? It is now late-February […]
For the third year in a row, the Diverse BookFinder team honored the observance of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday with a family program as part of the Bates College series of events. In response to the 2019 theme, “Lifting Every Voice: Intersectionality and Activism,” we focused on women activists. An initial search for Category: Biography […]
Read More… from Women of Color Leading the Way: Celebrating MLK Day
We have identified nine categories that capture the messages conveyed by children’s books featuring characters of color. Every book in the Diverse BookFinder collection is coded using one or more of these nine themes. The Nine Dominant Categories We Use Are: Beautiful Life: A focus on culture Oppression: Struggle, resistance, and triumph Cross-group: Interactions across […]
We believe that too many children are left out of mainstream picture books, so we research who is currently included — and how — to spark conversation and change. We would like to improve on how we categorize Native stories, including origin stories and the sacred. Humbly recognizing that it can take many people to […]
Read More… from Seeking Input and Ideas from North American Indigenous Peoples
This project is made possible with contributions from the following institutions:
