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Take a Close Look: Inventorying Your Classroom Library for Diverse Books
Author(s) -
Henderson Janelle W.,
Warren Katherine,
Whitmore Kathryn F.,
Flint Amy Seely,
Laman Tasha Tropp,
Jaggers Wanda
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
the reading teacher
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.642
H-Index - 50
eISSN - 1936-2714
pISSN - 0034-0561
DOI - 10.1002/trtr.1886
Subject(s) - diversity (politics) , psychology , space (punctuation) , mathematics education , pedagogy , representation (politics) , school library , primary education , sociology , library science , linguistics , computer science , politics , philosophy , anthropology , political science , law
Classroom libraries are an important component of elementary classrooms. These collections support readers’ literate identities, their motivation to read, and their access to texts that reflect a world outside of the classroom. Yet, many classrooms lack texts that mirror the racial, cultural, and linguistic diversity of students and their lived experiences. The authors—three elementary teachers (grades 1–3) and three teacher educators—inventoried the hundreds of books in the teachers’ classrooms. The team discovered that the libraries lacked diversity across intersectional representations. Teacher‐purchased books created the diversity that was present in each library, a lack of Black boy representation in transitional chapter books was evident, and the physical space of the libraries was problematic for young readers. The authors provide a strategy for classroom teachers to assess the contents of their own classroom libraries.