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Gatekeepers’ Disservice When Defining Books as "Boy" or "Girl"
This is not a new topic in the kid lit world and honestly, I’m not sure I’m going to bring and new or surprising ideas to the topic, but I definitely think it’s something that really does prevent kids from experiencing some amazing literature! Let’s start at the beginning –…
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KidLit Women Podcast
For Women’s History Month this past March, Grace Lin and Karen Blumenthal charged women in the children’s literature world to create “31 days of posts focused on improving the climate for social and gender equality in the children’s and teens’ industry.” Each essay was posted on Facebook with many days…
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#blogbookaday: Teddy's Favorite Toy
Summary: “A mom goes to great lengths to rescue her son’s favorite doll in this delightful tribute to treasured toys—and mothers. Teddy has a lot of cool toys. But his very favorite doll has the best manners, the sickest fighting skills, and a fierce sense of style. Then one morning, something…
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28 Social Justice Titles in YA Lit
It doesn’t seem like teens these days need any inspiration to fight to protect their rights as they’re demanding their voices be heard over gun control laws in America. But, it never hurts to read about people who may be different than you, so grab a title from this list…
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Top Ten Tuesday: Books I Want My Future Children to Read
There are so many amazing books available to kids in this day and age. It was hard to pick just ten, but I focused on ten titles that show a wide diversity in terms of culture, gender, race, ability, socioeconomic status and more. It’s important for kids to see all…
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Looking at Diversity from Another Angle
i just recently read a response by author, Shannon Hale about an experience she had visiting a school where only the girls were allowed to attend the presentation because her books are deemed “girl” books. Although many of Hale’s books feature female protagonists, what are we telling students when we…
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Diversity Focus
I’ve posted before about the importance of diversity in children’s literature, but for the next few days, I’m going to focus specifically on diversity because it is so important in the library world. I grew up in a small town in western Pennsylvania home to a small (very) conservative college,…
