For the past five years, the Center for the Study of Multicultural Children’s Literature (CSMCL) has partnered with ALSC to spotlight Día de los Ninos/Libros programs held by libraries with an African American focus. Based in Los Angeles, CSMCL strives to preserve the many cultures accessible through children’s and young adult literature.
Not only does the center do research related to multicultural literature, but CSMCL seeks to engage the library communities across the country through sponsoring programming. In an interview with Dr. Claudette McLinn, director of CSMCL, she sheds light on diverse literature, the grant itself, and the winners for 2017.
Dr. McLinn emphasized the importance of children seeing themselves in a positive light in the literature they are exposed to saying, “All children need to see positivity and beauty in themselves and understand that we are all one people.” Incorporating diverse and multicultural books into libraries is not only the movement within literature at large, but a personal passion for Dr. McLinn as she did not grow up with books having characters, narratives, and experiences that looked like her, sharing, “if the literature about your culture, who you are, your group is absent, you feel as if you are absent. Do they see me, hear me, value me? Am I important?” And therein lies the Día Grant.
The Día Grant, started with a browse of the ALSC website that listed the Día Programs happening all over the country. Reading through the programs, “I noticed there was one community that really was not participating. That community was the African American community. So we decided to provide a grant with an African American focus and ALSC totally embraced that!” The Día Grant awards $500.00 in selected children’s books for the chosen libraries holding a Día de Los Niños/El Día de Los Libros program with an African American focus. “We are finding that not only were we involving the African American community with this grant, but we were also involving communities that did not have people of color in their communities but wanted to expose children to various experiences,” shares Dr. McLinn. This year’s Día Grant winners are Alturas International Academy Library in Idaho and Quinby Street Resource Center Library in Pennsylvania.
Christina Barber, Spanish Teacher & Librarian at Alturas International Academy plans to host a program titled “Beauty in the World: Celebrating Dia” in which participants will spend three weeks researching inspiring African American authors whose contributions have made this world a more beautiful place.
Roland Barksdale-Hall, Library Director of Quinby Street Resource Center Library, is planning an intergenerational program called “Passing the Baton: The Influence of Frederick and Patricia McKissack’s Children’s Books”, as a result of the impact the two authors have had on his love of writing and storytelling.
At CSMCL, “we are proud of being members of ALA and ALSC and our ethnic caucuses. We are proud of the work and committed and looking forward to doing more.” CSMCL preserves a non-circulating collection of literature, available to scholars, teachers, librarians, students, and those interested, as well as accepts contributions of multicultural children’s literature, including manuscripts and illustrations. Dr. McLinn and the Center’s passion for diverse children’s literature comes from the power of the literature to “build compassion and love- and that’s how we will go forth.”
To learn more please visit www.csmcl.org. For more information on Día, visit www.dia.ala.org, or the National Día Program Registry for information on these and other Día programs.
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Today’s guest blogger is Sania Zaffar. Sania is currently a student at Loyola University Chicago finishing a degree in Special Education and interning at ALSC. She can’t wait to see how her future students will respond to literature that resembles their own lived experiences, something she did not have growing up.
If you’d like to write a guest post for the ALSC Blog, please contact Mary Voors, ALSC Blog manager, at alscblog@gmail.com.