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By Ikaika Keliʻiliki and Halie Kerns  Ikaika is a student in the MLIS program at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa and a library technician at the Hawaiʻi State Library. As a person of predominantly Native Hawaiian descent, he is particularly interested in the representation of Native Hawaiian culture and people in various media, particularly ...continue reading "Native Hawaiian Children’s Picture Books"

Illustration by Baljinder Kaur from Fauja Singh Keeps Going by Simran Jeet Singh Heather Haynes Smith, Ph.D. is an associate professor at Trinity University in San Antonio, TX. She teaches courses on special education, learning disabilities, and reading. She supports equity and reading initiatives through service, research, and providing professional development through community, professional, and ...continue reading "The Complexity of Characters: Representing Disability"

This guest post is co-authored by our summer MLIS graduate student interns, Karen Wang and Sanura Williams. The topic was inspired by Bates student Alex Gilbertson '22, from one of her final projects for our Co-founder and Director Dr. Krista Aronson's Psychology course called "The Power of Picture Books." Here at the Diverse BookFinder, our ...continue reading "Picture Book Portrayals of Economic Struggle in the U.S.: What do the numbers say?"

We’re happy to feature this guest post by author Megan Dowd Lambert. In addition to many other accomplishments (see her bio. below), Megan, in association with the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, has developed the Whole Book Approach, a process building on Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) that focuses on the picture book as ...continue reading "The Whole Book Approach Meets Critical Literacy"

“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 ...continue reading "Every Day Books for Every Child"

I was really eager to read this set of #OwnVoices books with the expectation that they would be ones with which I could identify. But by the time I was halfway through, the characters and their stories felt foreign to me. After a summer as the Diverse BookFinder’s student research fellow, racial and cultural representation in ...continue reading "A Critical Look at #OwnVoices Books"

My favorite bookshelf is in pieces — literally. Like a child’s Tinker Toy set waiting to be assembled, the shelf's parts lie in a bright red bin. One by one, librarians fit the scattered wooden dowels, blocks, sliders, and flats together until they form a home for 30 diverse picture books. Once those books are ...continue reading "August Shelfie: How to Start a Community Conversation with a Book About Immigration"

We recently came across Ashley Fetters’ article, “Where Is the Black Blueberries for Sal?” (The Atlantic, May 2019), which addresses the dearth of Black characters within the very frequent exploration of the Great Outdoors in children's picture books. The article notes that there are, sadly, only a handful of books that defy this trend (all 4 titles mentioned appear ...continue reading "Where are the books about Black Kids in Nature?"

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 ...continue reading "An Experiment with Inclusive Literature, Part II: One White Elementary Librarian’s Endeavor to Diversify Her Picture Book Collection"

In May 2017, I was invited by Anne Sibley O’Brien, author and illustrator, and by Dr. Krista Aronson, psychology professor at Bates College in Maine, to participate in the Diverse BookFinder Advisory Council. The Diverse BookFinder is an online comprehensive source that parents, teachers, librarians, authors, and publishers can use to locate picture books featuring ...continue reading "An Experiment with Inclusive Literature: One White Elementary Librarian’s Endeavor to Diversify Her Picture Book Collection"
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