Diverse book collections begin with honest assessment

Image credit: The Children’s Chalice. Books showing diversity of language

In Olympia, Wash., a church’s director of religious education took an unflinching look with her students at how diverse the program’s book collection was — discovering that while they had many books showing people with diverse skin colors, there was still “a very tall pile of books” that only had white people in them, without “anywhere near enough books that feature diversity in ability, sexual orientation, or gender.” Honest assessments like this are a great starting place for determining whether every child in a library’s (or a classroom’s) population will find books that speak to their personal experiences and validate their cultural identities. My appreciation to “DRESara” for sharing this process with her readership.