The Cleary Professor of Children and Youth Services, Eliza Dresang offered her first online course: Multicultural resources for Youth, and I just had to take it. It was quite the eye opening experience as we spent approximately 2 weeks on each major racial group in the United States, discussing the quality and quantities of materials for children that were accurate and authentic to the culture and the people they were representing. We looked at how different racial and ethnic groups were portrayed in children’s books throughout time, and how progressive or non-progressive these books could be.
We took the time to explore the many different ALA awards that highlight the best books for children, representing authentically different racial or ethnic groups—these awards (some of which are controversial) are extremely useful to teachers, librarians, parents, and so many other adults in growing their collection, and helping to distribute authentic materials for children.
This course left me with an extensive resource list—I subscribed to many blogs such as the Brown Bookshelf, and those by Debbie Reese, as well as many other awards sites and information that I know check on a regular basis to keep up with the new materials begin produced that focus on different racial groups tat may not be represented very well in the collections I work with.
Our final assignment for the class was very practical and useful. We looked at an existing collection of materials for youth, recognized points where the collection was lacking in materials for a specific racial group, and then created an annotated bibliography of materials that could be added to the collection. I took at look at the Teen materials in the Tualatin library which I am familiar with, and after talking to the teen librarian, I chose to focus on books and materials for and about Asians and Asian American. Here is my final annotated bibliography.
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