The month of October is International School Library Month. This year’s theme is reading for global peace and harmony. SCIS Cataloguing Team Leader Ceinwen Jones has some great suggestions for developing your library collections in support of this theme.
On first impressions, the International School Library Association seems to be setting some lofty aims for this year.
But isn’t reading for global peace and harmony what teacher librarians have been promoting since school libraries began? That is, providing materials that give students a chance to be transported to other worlds, and generating knowledge, understanding and appreciation for achievements, peoples, cultures and lives that are different to their own.
This ongoing work is surely a powerful and important step towards global peace and harmony.
What, then, is the best way to focus our resources on better achieving this goal? First, we must ensure our collections reflect the diversity of our communities, both local and global. By providing and promoting access to a variety of voices and perspectives, we can celebrate the ways diversity enhances our lives.
Here are five recently catalogued titles reflecting diversity, easily found using the search function in the SCIS database – an excellent tool for developing your collection!
Indigenous Australian history from the perspective of a First Nations female historian
Sister girl: Reflections on Tiddaism, identity and reconciliation
Jackie Huggins
SCIS number: 5396925
A new edition of Murri historian and activist Jackie Huggins’s seminal Tiddaist classic, featuring timely and compelling speeches and essays. The pieces in this collection represent almost four decades of writing, including essays, speeches and interviews. They combine both the public and the personal in a bold trajectory tracing one Murri woman’s journey towards self-discovery and human understanding. As a widely respected cultural educator and analyst, Huggins offers an Aboriginal view of the history, values and struggles of Indigenous people. Sister Girl reflects on many important and timely topics, including identity, activism, leadership and reconciliation. It challenges accepted notions of the appropriateness of mainstream feminism in Aboriginal society and of white historians writing Indigenous history. Jackie Huggins’s words, then and now, offer wisdom, urgency and hope.
Learning about pronouns
The pronoun book
Chris Ayala-Kronos and Melita Tirado
SCIS number: 5415913
They, she, he … all together, us! Join along in this vibrant board book’s joyful celebration of people and their pronouns. How do you know what someone wants to be called? Ask! This lively board book features illustrations of a diverse cast of people and simple text that introduces their pronouns.
Celebrating neurodiversity
Wired differently: 30 neurodivergent people who you should know
Joe Wells and Tim Stringer
SCIS number: 5411451
Covering the spectrum of neurodiversity, the book features a range of inspirational people, from actors and entertainers, to athletes and activists, and shows young neurodiverse readers that often what makes you different can be your key to success. The chapters feature biographies that expand to cover a broad range of themes, such as the importance of lived experience in discussions of neurodiversity, challenging stereotypes, representation and creativity.
A celebration of our diverse world
A world for me and you: where everyone is welcome
Uju Asika and Jennie Poh
SCIS number: 5408759
Imagine a world where everyone looks identical, where all food tastes the same, where we all speak the same language. A world that is … well, pretty boring. This picture book encourages inclusion, acceptance and kindness, and invites readers to imagine the world as a vast library with room on the shelves for everybody’s story. It is a celebration of our incredibly diverse world as it really is: home to 195 countries, thousands of different cultures, 10 million colours, 6,500 different languages and 4,300 religions.
Diversity toolkit for teachers and librarians
edited by Sam Elkin [and three others]
SCIS number: 5419894
Celebrating diversity in the community helps foster a sense of respect, equity and inclusion. This website gathers a wealth of content and digital tools – including expert-led webinars, blogs and relevant Infobase resources – to empower users with fresh insights, information and practical strategies.
