Activity Description
To explore the issue of diversity and its relationship to Library Services for children and young people I watched the TedX talk The Windows and Mirrors of Your Child’s Bookshelf (2016) featuring Grace Lin, a children’s book author/illustrator whose book, “Where the Mountain Meets the Moon,” received the 2010 Newbery Honor Award. Lin discusses her experiences as growing up as one of the few Asian people in her community.
What did you learn?
Lin speaks about the types of books she read when she was a child and how they largely featured non-Asian characters. The only books with Asian characters available to her featured caricatures and invoked a feeling of shame in her. She also enjoyed writing, but stories she wrote as a child also featured non- Asian heroines.
After realising she knew very little about her heritage, she began to write the books she wished she had when she was a child. She realised that children need books to be windows, not just mirrors, so that they can see things from other viewpoints.
She challenges the audience. Look at your child’s bookshelf are all books mirrors (about their world experience) or are they windows (about other world experiences)? You need both, Lin states, as a path for the development of empathy.
Her view is supported by Bishop who sees literature telling children who and what their society values, what kind of behaviours are acceptable and appropriate, and what it means to be a decent human being. If children cannot find themselves and people like them in the books around them, the message they receive is that their society does not value them (1990, p. 561).
How was the activity relevant to your professional practice?
Whilst Lin was talking about representations of culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) communities diversity in children’s books, and their importance in building a strong sense of self as well as empathy and understanding of others, I also found myself reflecting about how this would extend to other types of diverse books, those that are by and show LGBTQIA+ people, people with disabilities or Indigenous people. My feeling is that the principles of the windows and mirrors remains largely the same, as the concept of a book acting as a mirror implies that readers a part of themselves and their lives reflected back to them. When readers are able to find themselves in a story, they are validated; their experiences are not so strange as to never be spoken, understood or experienced by others (Tschida et al., 2014, p. 29).
I do often reflect of the types of people show in the imagery I maintain for my workplace, a tourism marketing organisation. I take care to include images that show racially diverse, who are LGBTQIA+ and people with disabilities as both tourists and tourism operators. Where I am able to influence the makeup of people involved in our photoshoots I do.
Knowledge gaps?
My first thought when considering the importance of diverse books in children’s library collections was – how do school / public libraries actually do this? Community analysis, collection review and community engagement are ideas that immediately leapt to my mind. I found an interesting pilot project mentioned in (Adam et al., 2020) run by the State Library of Western Australia that helps create books with families about their everyday experiences, representing the families’ culture and language. Projects like these could also address the issue of lack of access to literature written about particular cultural communities or in particular languages.
I would like to deepen my understanding about innovative ways libraries address diversity in their collections, which I would do by reviewing collection development policies, keeping up with the international literature on the topic, and looking for newly published books with diverse themes.
And finally I am going to look at the windows and mirrors on my own bookshelf.
References
Adam, H. J., Barratt-Pugh, C., Jackson- Barratt, L., & Somerville, R. S. (2020, July 9). Children’s books must be diverse, or kids will grow up believing white is superior. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/childrens-books-must-be-diverse-or-kids-will-grow-up-believing-white-is-superior-140736
Bishop, R. (1990). Walk tall in the world: African American literature for today’s children. The Journal of Negro Education, 59(4), 556-565. https//doi.org/10.2307/2295312
TEDx Talks (2016, March 19) Windows and mirrors of your child’s bookshelf: Grace Lin – TEDxNatick [Video]. Youtube. https://youtu.be/_wQ8wiV3FVo
Tschida, C. M., Ryan, C. L., Ticknor, A. S., (2014). Building on windows and mirrors: encouraging the disruption of “single stories” through children’s literature. Journal of Children’s Literature, 40(1) 28-39.
