Take a look at some of the things that have caught my attention around the interwebs this week:
My library has a Diversity Committee and I'm on it. The purpose is to spread awareness and understanding of the cultural differences in our library and our community and the world. We met this week and we watched some clips from the Anderson Cooper 360 piece on a CNN pilot study about children and race. Think we're post-racial? Think that kids as young as four or five don't pick up on white bias? Holy cats, you'd better think again. Take a look:
For more clips, click the link above. What do you think about this? What can we do about it? Definitely something to ponder...
On a lighter note, I discovered a new-to-me blog this week and I'm loving it, so you should check it out. Mel's Desk is the blog of a public children's librarian and what I love, love, love is that she posts what she does for her baby storytimes. We do baby storytimes, too, and I'm always looking for new ideas to spice things up a little bit. Plus, she does awesome things like make her own big books, which is something I never would have thought to do but now I really want to try.
Sarah of GreenBean TeenQueen posted her amazingly awesome Fall Picks: Need to Know YA Releases and I immediately printed it out for our teen librarian and reference department. She obviously puts a lot of work into these and they are very useful.
Lee Wind has a post over at Hunger Mountain that is very interesting: GLBTQ Teen Coming Out Stories: Move Beyond Them, Or Keep 'Em Coming? He debates (with himself) whether or not the YA shelves have hit their limit of GLBTQ coming out stories and we should be moving on to books with GLBTQ content where coming out is not the main focus. I have to agree with both of his minds on this one. I think there's a real need for stories about GLBTQ teens where their sexuality is not the main problem or conflict of the book, just as I think there's a real need for stories about teens of different ethnicities and races where race/ethnicity is not the main issue in the book. However, coming out is still a major event in a GLBTQ person's life and teens need relevant stories that reflect that. There's room on our shelves for both kinds of stories. Thanks to Maureen at Confessions of a Bibliovore for the link.
Speaking of books about different cultures, manuscripts are being accepted through September 30 for Lee & Low's NEW VOICES AWARD for a children's picture book story by a writer of color. Click on through for the info. Thanks to The Brown Bookshelf for the link.
Adrienne of What Adrienne Thinks About That talks about booktalking. I used to be in the really-prepared, ready-to-do-formal-booktalks-at-a-moment's-notice camp because at my last library we did them on a regular basis. At my current library, not so much, so I'm drifting into the read-this-book-because-it's-totally-awesome! camp. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Whatever gets kids reading!
And that's all I have to say about that. Have an awesome weekend, folks!