Episode 237 Transcript

The Cult of Pedagogy Podcast, Episode 237

Jennifer Gonzalez, Host

GONZALEZ: Books are one of the most powerful ways to learn about others and ourselves. Education professor Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop famously described it this way:

“Books are sometimes windows, offering views of worlds that may be real or imagined, familiar or strange. These windows are also sliding glass doors, and readers have only to walk through in imagination to become part of whatever world has been created and recreated by the author. When lighting conditions are just right, however, a window can also be a mirror. Literature transforms human experience and reflects it back to us, and in that reflection we can see our own lives and experiences as part of the larger human experience. Reading, then, becomes a means of self-affirmation, and readers often seek their mirrors in books.” (source)

For all three of these experiences to be available to us, we need a wide range of books to read, stories that represent a whole spectrum of people and lives. In many schools and classrooms, however, the offerings are far too limited, too narrow. This may be due to laws put in place to make sure that many stories are intentionally left out, or it may be because those in charge of choosing the books simply haven’t been connected to the voices and stories that would enrich their collections, get more kids excited about reading, and offer far more of those windows, mirrors, and sliding glass doors. Curating the kind of library that truly reflects the diversity of human experience takes time, intention, money, and good tools. It’s also an ongoing process, because incredible titles are coming out every year, and as a species, we’re getting better every year at elevating voices that emerge to bravely tell their own unique stories. This is good work, valuable work, but it is, in fact, work. 

The goal of this episode is to help you do that work. I’ve invited three exceptional librarians to share their expertise and recommendations in curating more inclusive collections:

Julia Torres currently serves as a public librarian in Colorado and was named as a 2020 Library Journal Mover and Shaker. She is the co-author, along with Valerie Tagoe, of the 2022 book Liven Up Your Library: Design Engaging and Inclusive Programs for Tweens and Teens. Julie Stivers is a high school librarian in North Carolina who was named the 2023 School Librarian of the Year. She is the author of the 2021 book Include and a co-author of the upcoming book Manga Goes to School: Cultivating Engagement and Inclusion in K-12 Settings. And Cicely Lewis, who was named the 2020 School Librarian of the Year, is also the author of the Hair Magic series, six chapter books about Imani, a young girl whose hair magically changes when she embraces her inner powers, such as bravery, compassion, creativity, and more. 

We began our conversation by talking about why representation is so important in school libraries. Then we shifted into the nuts and bolts of how educators can build an inclusive collection, including a few really solid online platforms that can help and some ideas for getting funding. Finally, just to whet your appetite, each of my guests recommends a few favorite titles that would make excellent additions to anyone’s collection.

Before we get started, I’d like to thank Alpaca for sponsoring this episode. Interested in knowing how your teachers are really doing, right now? I’ve always believed that asking teachers and students for feedback is one of the simplest and most powerful ways to improve a school’s culture. Earlier this year at SXSW EDU, I discovered something new that really caught my attention: it’s called semantic pulse surveying and it’s from a company called Alpaca. You might have heard them on episode 230 of the podcast back in June! I tried it myself, and it was so different from the usual surveys we’re used to. Instead of picking from a 1-to-5 scale, I just tapped words that described how I was feeling — words like joyful or refreshed or like half-hearted or drained — and I instantly thought “teachers will feel seen and heard with this.”

What’s great is that these surveys are super quick and anonymous, but they give school leaders deep insights into how their staff is really doing. Pair that with Alpaca’s teacher recognition packs, and you’ve got a system that not only listens to teachers but celebrates them too. If you want to make a real difference in your school’s culture, check out Alpaca at alpacapacks.com/pedagogy and get a special 15% off just for Cult of Pedagogy listeners.

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Now here’s my conversation with Julie Stivers, Cicely Lewis, and Julia Torres about how we can curate more inclusive libraries.

GONZALEZ: Oh, by the way, also, this is audio-only. 

LEWIS: Oh good.

GONZALEZ: This is just to facilitate the conversation. It’s not video, so yeah. 

LEWIS: Thank you, thank you. 

GONZALEZ: Okay, so, I would like to welcome Julie, Julia, and Cicely to the podcast. Because there’s so many of us here in the room, I’m going to just ask that you each take a quick turn telling us a little bit about your background, the work that you’ve done in regards to, like, representation in libraries. So, Julia, let’s start with you. 

TORRES: So I started off as a school librarian. Before that, I was a language arts teacher. And my campus reopened their library that had been closed for a few years. We had five different schools that were co-located on one campus. So I had middle school students and high school students that I was working with, and one charter school. And it was such a great experience because I really got to understand the building blocks of librarianship by doing it. I just jumped right in, and I learned about collection development, I learned a little bit about how important it is to have strong programs that will be engaging for young people. And then I also, it got me interested in libraries as a source for social change. And so with time, that school, or those schools and that campus closed. I went back into the language arts classroom for a year, and then I got my current job at a public library. And I’m now a teen services program administrator. So my job is to make sure that young people have programs, services, and are engaging with the collection because it reflects who they are as well as their interests, their tastes, their values. A lot of the work that I’ve done in the educational spaces have had to do with teacher representation, so representing the interests of predominantly educators of color but also educators from historically marginalized backgrounds. So that could be linguistic minorities, that could be, or people who have been minoritized. That could be cultural or ethnic minoritized groups. And I’ve been honored to be able to go around the country speaking to librarians associations as well about the work that we can do with collection development but also developing programs and services that are putting forward the interests, identities, and lived experiences, focusing on experiences of empowerment, not experiences of trauma so much, though we do recognize that that’s part of the experience. But really just uplifting the stories of people from the margins. That’s been the work that I’ve engaged myself in for the last few years. 

GONZALEZ: Wonderful. And we’re going to ask this again at the end, but I think it’s a good place here for us to just, like, mention where, where is your platform mostly online? 

TORRES: My platform is honestly, the biggest one of course is on X, formerly known as Twitter. But I, I have a small following on Instagram, I have a small following of people who I’ve actually met in person on LinkedIn and, you know, I would say that my largest following is probably the International Society for Technology and Education because they’re the people who, who produced and edited and distribute my book, which is coauthored title with another librarian named Valerie Tagoe. She’s in Texas. And she’s doing amazing work with young people and with other librarians in Texas. So my book is called “Liven Up Your Library: Design Engaging and Inclusive Programs for Tweens and Teens.” And it came out a couple of years ago, and I have been really honored to be able to work with people who have had a positive reaction to and experience with that book. 

GONZALEZ: Awesome. All right. Thank you. Julie, let’s move to you next. Tell us about yourself. 

STIVERS: Sure. Wow, you’re going to make me, following either Julia or Cicely is really tough. But I would definitely like to take up the least amount of space on this call. I am currently a high school librarian. I’m actually at a Quaker school right now. I’m working with grades 9-12, but eight years, for the eight years previous I was at an alternative middle school. Both of them are in North Carolina. When I think about work in this area, right, the joyful work, I think we would all say it’s starting in our own space and building a beautiful collection, and then pushing our advocacy outward from there. I guess if I was going to pull one thing, I would talk about the LibFive. So the LibFive was something that I created, oh my gosh, in 2016, wow, with a group of eighth graders who are now in their early 20s. And the LibFive stood for five key foundations to build inclusive libraries. And it was professional development for educators because who better to train other librarians and educators in general than students? Student voice is usually the one missing most, especially students who have been marginalized from any kind of teacher training. Three of our five tenets directly relate to literature. They are, No. 2 was “show me on the,” “show me on the shelves and walls, read those books yourself.” No. 3 was “graphic novels and manga are not extra.” And No. 4 was “show the joy in our stories.” I see my main role as a librarian kind of threefold. It’s nurturing my students’ reading lives, their interests, and their whole, full selves in and through a library program, which can be an incubator of joy and belonging. 

GONZALEZ: Fantastic. All right. Cicely, you’re next. 

LEWIS: Hi, I’m Cicely Lewis, and I’m a school librarian in Georgia, and I have been at the same school for 15 years. And I truly love what I do. Like, every day, I love going to work. And I also was a 2020 School Librarian of the Year and, because of a program that I started in my school called Read Woke, which was an award-winning program and garnered the attention of the world, which we’re now currently in 29 states and three countries. However, due to, you know, recent book banning and weaponization of the word “woke” we have had many school librarians who have not been able to continue. I also continue my advocacy work because I’m not going to be deterred. I write a column in the School Library Journal where I’m constantly giving out recommendations. I have now a book series out, so I’m constantly just trying to spread the word about the power of diverse books and the power of the school library. 

GONZALEZ: Oh. I love everything you said. “I will not be deterred.” That’s great. So Read Woke is, is your platform. And also, Julie, did you have a website that you wanted to share, something like that? 

STIVERS: I don’t have a website, but I have a Linktree, so all of my —

GONZALEZ: Okay. 

STIVERS: — socials and everything is on there, and it’s bespokelib. 

GONZALEZ: Okay, that’s right. 

LEWIS: I know that. 

TORRES: I can put my website into the chat. 

GONZALEZ: Yes. Okay, yes. Do that. And I’m going to be linking to all of your stuff in the notes for this so that people can find, you know, can go out to all of those various branches of where you’ve all got your assets and things. So the goal today, this is, as I’ve mentioned to you before, this is now my second round of interviewing librarians on this podcast. We talked to a group a few months ago about all the things librarians can do for teachers in terms of helping them instructionally and with curriculum and lesson planning, even. But this topic of collections and then the representation in our school collections, in our classroom libraries, I wanted to give a whole separate hour just to that. And that’s something that all three of you have done a lot of work on. So before we start to get into the nuts and bolts of how a person can build a more diverse collection, I wanted to really dig into why representation matters, even what that even means. So what can you share with us so that the people listening understand the impact that this kind of inclusion can have, when we really make sure that we are including texts in our libraries that not only reflect the kids in our class and the diversities of them and their families and the community, but even the larger world that’s different from what’s sitting in our classrooms. 

TORRES: I can start, and I can say that there was a time when I was doing a workshop, and somebody asked me if it would be a good idea to have a banner in the library that said “multicultural books” and then put all the books that were representing cultures that had been historically marginalized in one section. My response was, this was in a predominantly white, or an environment with predominantly white students. I think they might have been in Iowa or something like that. So if you’re listening, you’re in Iowa, if you’re at that school, you know, I hope you took my advice. My advice was not to do that because I do think that we’ve got to get to a place in our society where seeing somebody whose lived experience is different from your own is natural, expected, anticipated, desired. There are too many people in the world who could, for example, look at Netflix and open it up and just ignore the fact that when I search for “romance” on Netflix, by default, the majority of the titles I see, that just pop up, are going to have white protagonists. 

LEWIS: Yep. 

TORRES: And the same thing happens in the library world. So my advice to them was not to separate out the multicultural books but to get young people accustomed to looking for storylines and characters that would feature the full range of the human experience, not just one human experience or one group’s human experience, even if they happen to be the dominant group. 

LEWIS: So for me, when I started as a school librarian at my school, previously I had been an English and Spanish teacher, and the library was not the place that kids wanted to go. Actually, and I tell this story all the time. When I announced to my students, “Hey, I’m going to be the new school librarian next year. I won’t be in the classroom.” One of the students said, “Are you being punished?” 

GONZALEZ: Oh. 

LEWIS: And so that was the, yes, that was the attitude and the vibes that you, you had about our school librarians. So I went in intentionally to try to bring them in. And I had all these different contests and things going on, and what I realized is that I was not connecting to them in a level where they could actually see themselves. And so I pushed books, I found books, I went out on, you know, social media looking for books. I was looking in the School Library Journal trying to find these books, and I started putting them out. And some of them had been in the school library. They just weren’t on display. And I put them out and the kids just gravitated towards them. And so I think that’s one of the most important things is being able to see yourself in a book. And if you’d never had that experience of not, then you really don’t realize how important it is. I still get excited when I see a book with a Black girl on the cover with an afro like mine. And, you know, just talking about things that, you know, I went through that I want to talk about. Or when I read a picture book, and the little Black girl has a bonnet on at bedtime. These small things, they really matter, and they help the readers to connect, and they help the students to connect. And because I put these books out on display and, and not just, you know, diversifying your collection but also your programming too, that was something that went hand in hand. I was able to attract the kids into the library and to get them reading. And focusing on, as I, as I continued my journey, realizing that, you know, our experience is not just trauma but also joy, and bringing in the books like “The Electric Slide,” this picture book that’s all about learning the Electric Slide and how important it is in the Black community. And “I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter,” which is a book that I can, I have to buy five copies every year because the kids will not bring it back. 

GONZALEZ: Wow. 

LEWIS: They just love it. And, you know, books like “Children of Blood and Bone,” you know, seeing these characters, these female characters who are not damsels in distress, but they’re out kicking butt and fighting. And so providing this representation for the students, letting them know that they belong in the library, they are worthy. Because I think that many, oftentimes when you don’t see yourself in books and movies, you don’t think you’re worthy of love and you’re worthy to be in this space. And so I really feel like that, that is the true and purest reason of why we, we do what we do, and why it’s so important. If we want these kids to read, we have to find texts that connect to them. And so that is, that is one of the main reasons why I think your collection needs to be diverse and, and not just racially diverse but delving into other areas and caveats that people really don’t talk about and bringing those to the forefront. 

GONZALEZ: I have a quick question, just to follow up, something that you said. “Not just the books but also the programming.” What exactly are you referring to? 

LEWIS: Yes. So initially I just put the books out, and then I started realizing that I wanted to have programming that reflected the needs of my community. And, and so I started a voter registration campaign in the library, teaching the students about the power of voting, why it’s important. And everything I do is centered on a book, and we focused on Brandy Colbert’s “The Voting Booth.” And then for my students, I work in a school that’s over 80, 80 percent Latinx, Hispanic. And so being able to bring them to the forefront and make them experts in our quinceañera book and fashion show. So they became the experts, but they had to read a book by an author from a Spanish-speaking country, a person of Hispanic or Latinx descent. And they had to write a book review, and they could bring in their quinceañera dresses, and they modeled, and they got to teach other people about their culture, and it really was empowering for them to, you know, be at a space where they were able to be, you know, be in charge and to share and to show, hey, my culture is so important here. And then also we used to have something I called, first I started Phenomenal Fridays because I got it from somebody else, then I changed the name to Woke Wednesdays, where we brought in just different people, organizations. It was kind of like exhibition style, and the kids could just go through and learn different things. And the, one of the biggest things, and this is so small, but it was huge, many of my students don’t know the benefits of the public library. So bringing the public library in and talking to them about how you’re welcome there, we can do this for you and graduating them to the point where when they graduate, they know they have a space to go and a place where they can continue their library journey. 

GONZALEZ: Julie, let’s close out this question with you. 

STIVERS: Sure. 

GONZALEZ: In terms of, you know, what your experiences have been with representation in students and the impact that that can have. 

STIVERS: Yeah. I really like quotes from other educators or authors. Donalyn Miller says the absence of a voice is a judgment against it. I’m going to say that again. The absence of a voice is a judgment against it. Our library shelves or collections, they’re always talking. What message are they sending about who is included and welcome in our space and who isn’t? Our books are always talking. Like, our displays are always talking, like Cicely just mentioned. Representation, especially when it’s written by a member of the community, communities depicted in a novel is everything. We know that it can help provide healing from living in a racist, homophobic, transphobic, xenophobic society. I think it can provide a roadmap of a future that can be hard to imagine for some of our teens. And it can build empathy for teens or any age student reading a book featuring a community that they don’t have personal experience with. It’s a win-win-win-win-win. Jason Reynolds says, you know, our students don’t need us to save them. They need us to see them. And what better way to see our students than to mirror them, right. Obviously, Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop first came with that brilliant metaphor of windows and mirrors but to mirror our students on the shelves and on the walls and in our programs. All of our students and whether or not you’re reflecting our students first and foremost and then also reflecting the global majority. 

GONZALEZ: Good quotes. 

LEWIS: I love those. 

GONZALEZ: Okay. So we’re going to shift now to the how. If, let’s say I’m a classroom teacher, I have a small collection of books in my classroom, and I know that it needs help. It needs work, it needs, you know, to be way more representative. Where do I even start? Are there some best practices for building a collection? Do, do we need a little education on, on really how far does representation actually extend? I think in some people’s minds it’s like, okay, I need a few different ethnicities in my characters and then I’m good. And then also there’s always the question of funding and what tools and websites can help with this. So let’s go around and talk a little bit about how we go about building this library, and then we’re going to finish by having you all recommend some titles in a little bit. 

TORRES: So I can say that just going back to the anecdote that I shared about separating out the multicultural books. Something that we want to think about is what if you are one of the only people representing, for example, Eritrea or another African nation. And you’re the only one, only student representing that culture at your school. How are you going to feel if people walk past the multicultural books displayed day after day, and they don’t choose the books from that section. Because that’s something that I hear a lot from people in predominantly white spaces is that the kids are not choosing to read books that feature characters from cultures outside their own. So that means we need to do a better job of integrating stories into classrooms but also libraries that not only reflect the lived realities of people from a variety of backgrounds, but also that are authentic and that show people in their best light. Not, not unrealistic pictures but that we want to be, make sure there’s a balance, right, between depicting a group of people as victims that are always traumatized and uplifting the empowering stories. When I was young, it was popular to talk about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. And Rosa Parks. 

GONZALEZ: Yes. 

TORRES: Nobody was out here talking about James Baldwin. Nobody was out here talking about Audre Lorde. 

GONZALEZ: Right. 

TORRES: Nobody was talking about Assata Shakur. There were so many people who I didn’t grow up learning about —

GONZALEZ: Yeah. 

TORRES: — simply because, you know, that wasn’t what was done. So we have this great opportunity to use tools like Booksource Classroom manager, Classroom Library Manager. You can upload your classroom library titles in there, and it will do a diversity audit for you, and then it will recommend titles to help you fill in the gaps where, you know, perhaps your library is, is most of the time I want to believe it’s unintentional. Unintentionally missing representation that is, that is factual but also uplifting or empowering. And another thing that I think is, is a great tool. The public library has curated lists of collections. Public librarians curate lists all the time. So you can go, and you can either use a tool called NoveList yourself. NoveList is phenomenal. Or you can go to the library and ask someone to help you build a curated list of titles that meet a specific need. And then the last tool that I will offer you was recommended to me by two librarians. One is an elementary librarian. Her name is Jillian Heise, and I adore her. She’s phenomenal. And then another was, it’s Edith Campbell. She is a librarian but also a scholar. Those two have taught me so much about the field of librarianship. Social Justice Books has a guide to identifying harmful stereotypes depicted in children’s literature. So that way you can learn to see what you might not automatically see because it is not a part of your lived experience. That is so important. 

GONZALEZ: I want to make sure that I get a link from you to that guide too, because I’m on the site but I want to make sure that — is it the Guide for Selecting Anti-Bias Children’s Books? I’m looking at their site right now.

TORRES: Yes. 

GONZALEZ: And there’s a little banner. Okay, got it. 

TORRES: That’s it. 

GONZALEZ: That’s going to be really, really helpful because I think that there are different levels of, of understanding this and sort of diversifying your library 101 is getting the Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. Books. And it’s like, okay. Having some, having these guides would be really helpful. 

TORRES: I do think they are really helpful, and I do think that the more you expose yourself to that process of doing the diversity audit, which by now, it’s not a new thing, right? People have been talking about diversity audits for at least five years, if not longer. So the diversity audit, from where I’m sitting, that is the 101. 

GONZALEZ: Mhmm, okay. Yes. 

TORRES: From where I’m sitting, the diversity audit is the 101, and then we start learning about the multi-layered identities that can be depicted. 

GONZALEZ: Yes. 

TORRES: I heard a phenomenal talk from a woman, she is in the UK. Her name is Dr. Melanie Ramdarshan Bold. And she does a lot of research into children’s literature. They look at intersectionality a bit differently because in the UK, they might have someone who identifies as Muslim but is East African and grew up in the UK. So there’s the layering of economic differences, social, racial, national, nationality. 

GONZALEZ: Yeah. 

TORRES: So there’s so many layers to what makes up a person’s life story and identity. 

GONZALEZ: Yes. 

TORRES: And I think that we do ourselves a real disservice in this country by sometimes thinking about people as a monolith or you can only be one or a maximum two things. And if, if I can allow for two things, and, and two identity markers, and my mind and my heart don’t have room for more. And I think that that’s, that’s really something that we need to work on, both in education and librarianship. 

GONZALEZ: Yeah, yeah. 

LEWIS: Julia and I have worked together on this project. We were commissioned by Penguin Random House, their commitment to make a one-stop shop and a toolkit because there are a lot of teachers who are right now just trying to figure out how to get their footing. And so it’s the Penguin Random House High School Collection. And Julie and I, we all had different themes, and we curated some great books, and it really takes all the guesswork out of selecting books for you. And we even have suggested lesson plans, whether you be the, the high school librarian or the classroom teacher. There truly was, is something in there, and we worked along with two other educators, award-winning, three other educators, I’m sorry. And I’m telling you, they, I learned so much from them and their guides are, their guides are just amazing, and I’ve been recommending them to the teachers in my school. And so if you’re looking for something quick and easy because you’re just starting this journey and you really want to dive in and do this work, I highly suggest you check that out. 

GONZALEZ: That sounds like a fantastic project. Okay. Thank you for that. Julie, anything else? 

STIVERS: Yes. I, I would say for people beginning, the first thing is to recognize this is like a foundational practice and not something to sprinkle on top. You know, I’m sure Cicely and Julia and probably have the same thing, you know, after we’ll present and someone will come up and say something like, “Well, I don’t have money to purchase diverse books.” Well, then you don’t have money to purchase books, right? 

LEWIS: That’s right. 

STIVERS: Which is why I kind, I love We Need Diverse Books. Their website is amazing, but I myself don’t use the word “diverse” —

GONZALEZ: Yes. 

STIVERS: — because I think it can ironically center like a white, cishet, English-speaking, Christian and “other” everything else, which is the exact opposite of what we want to be happening. I usually say “inclusive.” It’s helpful, like, I think, when you’re working with other educators in our school spaces. I think a best practice is to represent your students, but you can’t represent your students if you don’t know your students. We all know it always comes back to building relationships, and I think on a micro and a macro level, that’s really true. And just like you were saying, Jenn, we have to think of the word diversity if we’re going to use that word really widely. You know, we mentioned race and gender identity, sexuality, religion. But the way we think, the way we move, the way our bodies move, our family structure, our language. Reading widely, especially if you’re listening to this and you are a white educator, I’m a white educator. If you’re only reading books by white authors, like, no. You are short-changing yourself, your students, all of your students, including your white students. Inclusive literature is not medicine, right? It’s food. And so I really want to, like, push back on that notion of it’s something we’re going to add into our collections, right, that I’m sure we’ve all heard. When instead, this is our collection. And if we’re not including the tapestry of all of these great authors who have been marginalized, then we’re not sharing all the great stories that we know. Finding all of these great books, in addition to the tools that have been mentioned, I think following, there’s some key authors that I would follow on social media. You have to be following Angie Thomas and Nic Stone not only because they have so many amazing books themselves but because they promote so many other authors. You know, I’m going to buy everything written by those two authors. Jason Reynolds, Adam Silvera, Andrew Joseph White, Cory McCarthy, Kacen Callender, right? And following those authors, you learn so much about other authors, right. Like, our, our PLNs, our digital PLNs, need to be really wide, especially if you are a white educator trying to do this work and serving a lot of students who you don’t have a lived experience that maybe matches their lived experience. You have to push back on yourself any kind of, like, white savior model. Again, right, like going back to Jason Reynolds. Our students don’t need us to save them. I’m not saving them by introducing them to Jason Reynolds. I’m seeing them and I’m recognizing that Jason Reynolds is a genius. And all of my students, including my students, should be reading him. The Diverse Book Finder for picture books is one I don’t think we’ve mentioned yet. And funding, really quick, because right, all of this, what we’re talking about takes money. 

GONZALEZ: Yeah. 

STIVERS: It’s a hustle. We shouldn’t have to hustle. That’s the truth. We shouldn’t have to, but we do, and we will, right, for our students. I’m a huge fan of DonorsChoose. I never send it to friends and family. Some educators are reluctant to do it because they think they’re going to be, like, I don’t know asking everyone they know on Facebook. I only ever did it through their website and strangers, and I did over 80 at my last school. And they really helped me transform my collection. I didn’t add things to it. I rebuilt it. There are so many people out there that want to, especially in the current climate, they want to support school libraries, and they want to support the mission we’re talking about. And through DonorsChoose is a way to do that. And if you can also, I also got a Laura Bush for libraries grant when I first started. 

LEWIS: Whoo. 

STIVERS: Right? If you’re a, if you’re a school that is lucky enough to serve youth that, and your school qualifies for Title I funding, look into a Laura Bush grant too. 

LEWIS: I may need some help with that, because I wanted to do that. I did judging for it, but that application process was just overwhelming. So I may have to tap into you to help me with that. 

STIVERS: Please do. Please do. I would love to help you. 

GONZALEZ: You said something a minute ago. I would love it if you would say just a little more about that when you said, “I didn’t add to it. I rebuilt it.” you had an existing library, and so I get that this was sort of a, a mental approach that you took, but did it sort of, like, on a logistical level look different too? 

STIVERS: It did. I think I had a very, like, similar situation to what Cicely is talking about. Like going into a library that just felt kind of dead, right? Like I always say, you know, the walls, like everything was brown except the people in the books. They were all white. It was like the collection needed to be gutted, and so I weeded it. Like I am not going to disrespect my students walking through the door, a 90 percent Black and Latinx school, by having books that do not reflect them. Like, no. I’d rather have an empty shelf and two books proudly there that, like, I bought. So yes, logistical in terms of like gutting and not waiting. And that’s how DonorsChoose really helped. And then at the end of my first year is when I did the Laura Bush grant, and that really helped too. Because then I could really redo. And we haven’t really talked about graphic novels and manga. That’s like a whole other podcast, but I can’t say enough about graphic novels and manga belong in any equity-focused library or classroom. 

GONZALEZ: Let’s give you a moment though for that, because I know that’s a huge part of your platform. And having somebody who has a 17-year-old son who went through a long anime and manga phase, I’m familiar with that world a little bit, but I’ve never seen it positioned in terms of this inclusion conversation that we’re having. So take a minute and tell us a little bit about your passion for manga. 

STIVERS: I am sure Cicely and Julia could say the same. When you think about who is standing at your manga shelves, it is students that are inhabiting more than one, like, beautiful, marginalized community. And we know, right, there is a greater percentage of teen manga readers that are Black, Latinx, queer, neurodivergent, and the beautiful intersectionalities within. So we have, in addition to, of course, manga is from Japan, so it is another experience, another country, another language, even though it’s localized into English for us to read it. But just because of what I’m talking about, of who is interested in manga so much, like why wouldn’t we flood our libraries with it? Yeah. So. I could go, I could say way too much so that’s all I’ll say for now. 

LEWIS: And stop telling kids that it’s not a real book. That’s what angers me. 

STIVERS: Yes. 

LEWIS: I’ve just had this discussion. The teacher said, “Oh, you can check out books, whatever you want.” And the kids went to the graphic novels. “Oh no. That’s not a real book.” And I was like, am I being punked? And I had to take time and educate her. I, I just, that is just something that we really need to stop book shaming kids for reading picture books, graphic novels. 

GONZALEZ: Yeah. 

LEWIS: And like I said, reading is reading a cookbook. Reading a poetry book. 

GONZALEZ: Yeah. 

LEWIS: Reading the back of a cereal box. So I’m so glad that you brought up graphic novels, and it’s a great way to introduce students to classics. If you really want them to read, maybe learn about Shakespeare. They’re probably not going to read the entire Julius Caesar, but they’ll read the graphic novel. So I, I’m really an advocate for that, and I’m glad you brought that up about graphic novels. 

GONZALEZ: We are going to be, that’s out, that’s going to be our next step here, our last thing that we’re going to talk about is just — you know, I know that there are so many great titles out there, but I thought this would be a really wonderful opportunity to have you each give us three or four titles that you’re just excited about so that people listening can also get excited about those and either go and grab those titles or just get their wheels turning about what’s out there. Because I, especially if somebody doesn’t have much of an inclusive library, it’s hard to even conceptualize of some of these. It’s all very abstract. And so hearing about some concrete titles could help. So Cicely, I don’t think you’ve gone first with any of these questions. I want to let you go first, especially as the person who is heading an organization called Read Woke. 

LEWIS: I’ve been enjoying listening. 

GONZALEZ: What comes to mind for you when, if somebody says, what, what can I start with? What are some great books that I can go and grab? 

LEWIS: So one that I’m really enthralled with, we recently had this author come to our school and spoke to our students. Jas Hammonds, the author of “We Deserve Monuments.” And, it is, it’s just, you talk about multi-layered. There’s so much going on, so much representation and it’s a young girl. She has to move to the South to stay with her grandma. Her grandma is terminally ill, and her grandma is kind of like the grandmas in Mississippi that I grew up with. She does not hold her tongue. She has her beliefs about the LGBTQ community. She has her beliefs about everybody, and they’re not politically correct. They are, and she so authentically was able to capture that. And it’s just, truly a coming-of-age story. There’s one girl trying to find herself, discovering her sexuality. And also, you know, going between two worlds. Being of mixed race and, you know, dealing with that and so it was just a great book to have at the school for my students and have the author come and speak was the cherry on top. And she has a new book that just came out and it’s called, I think it’s called “Thirsty.” “Thirsty,” that title alone would catch the kids because that’s, you know, if somebody’s thirsty, it has a whole different meaning from what, you know, we, we think about with thirsty. So she, I mean Jas Hammonds, you know, just a great writer and does a great job capturing student voice, and I highly recommend their books. And something that’s not really a book that I would have in my library, but this summer I decided to read for me in my adult reading, and so I encourage all of us to do that. I read “Razorblade Tears” by, I want to say, S. A. Cosby. And when you, you talk about a book that packs a punch, like it kept me on the edge of my seat. And it’s these two fathers in the South, and they’re both very traditional but their sons found each other, fell in love, and got married. And their, both sides of the family, because one of the characters is white and one is Black. They don’t really, they’re not really accepting of their, you know, their relationship. But they end up adopting a baby and everything is, you know, they’re moving right along despite all of the things that the family has thrown at them, and then they get murdered. Yeah. And the fathers come together to solve the crime of who did it. They go on a journey together. And when I tell you it really speaks to, especially in the Black community, how much trauma, you know, from the LGBTQ community a person can receive in the Black community and just everything that you’ve ever heard if you’ve ever been in those spaces is, is put on the page. And it’s challenged, and it’s educational but it’s done in such a way that, you know, it’s still entertaining. And so like I said, that was, that’s something that I read. You know, that’s a, I guess it could be considered crossover but more so just something that you, you know, you want to read for yourself. So I highly recommend reading that one for yourself. 

GONZALEZ: Yeah. 

LEWIS: It’s so good. 

GONZALEZ: Julie, what about you? 

STIVERS: I’m going to hype a couple for me. I would call them, like, modern classics because I don’t really like the term classics. But from 2020, but I definitely want to hype a graphic novel first. I do want to quickly say, thinking about, like, if a librarian had a couple money, a little bit of money, like, to buy the MLK book and the Rosa Parks book, I’d say, no, I don’t want librarians to buy those books, right? Like, if you were buying books, would we only want to read biographies? You know what I mean? Like, is that the representation that we would want? 

GONZALEZ: Yes. 

STIVERS: I would say, buy Cicely’s books instead. If you are, like, you know, in the elementary classroom. 

LEWIS: Thank you. 

STIVERS: Of course. 

GONZALEZ: This is the Hair Magic series? Is that, that’s your collection, correct? 

LEWIS: Yes. That’s my early reader, early chapter book collection. It’s all about Black girl loving her hair, and her hair has magical powers. So, you know, every day, every month I come to work with a different hair style, and my coworkers are like, “Whoa. What happened? Oh my God.” And it’s truly an artwork of expression, of culture, I’m just, it’s just, and I wanted to share that and create self-love. And so Lerner gave me the opportunity to do that. And when I tell you I am just loving going out sharing that book with kids everywhere. So it’s, it’s been a, it was a joy to do, and it’s like you said, it’s a way, when we have these books about Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, Harriet Tubman, I have those people infused in this book as well. But being able to have it but also being able to show the joy and the, the beauty of the culture. And so it’s, it was just a great project so thank you for bringing it up, Julie. 

STIVERS: Of course, of course. Because we don’t want, like, when you’re adding books or re-changing your collection, like. It shouldn’t just live in realistic fiction, right? 

LEWIS: Yes. 

STIVERS: I mean magical hair, yes. Like, I want fantasy and romance about a Black trans character and a neurodivergent indigenous character and a queer autistic character, right? Like Audre Lorde, of course, the queen. We don’t live single-issue lives. Our students don’t live single-issue lives, and our characters can’t either. “Messy Roots.” I love this. It’s “Messy Roots: A Graphic Memoir of a Wuhanese American.” That’s the subtitle. It’s Laura Gao. She self describes it as a book growing up as a queer Chinese American immigrant in Texas. And she is from Wuhan, and so, which no one had heard of in, like, her American spaces until after 2020, of course. And so, it has it all. Like, growing up, awkwardness, beautiful art, both like this kind of idyllic rural life that she was in Wuhan, and then the suburban life in Texas. It does deal with, like, you know, identity searching, xenophobia, anti-Asian racism, coming out to your immigrant family. SLJ recommends it for grades 7 and up. I totally agree with that. I had it in my middle school library, and of course I have it in my high school library too. My favorite nonfiction from the past few years is “Queer Ducks” by Eliot Schrefer, and it’s a guide to the natural world of animal sexuality, like in all of its beautiful queerness. So the TLDR on this is that we have been lied to, and researchers and scientists have known about same-sex animal behavior for years and years and years. There’s over 1,500 documented studies. It’s wild. 

GONZALEZ: Wow. 

STIVERS: But for any queer student, right, or adult who we’ve been told that our queerness is unnatural, right, they couldn’t be more wrong. So “Queer Ducks” is kind of like slyly humorous. The science is very accessible, and it’s incredibly affirming. And that’s also, SLJ also says grades 7 and up for that, and same, I had it in my middle school library and my high school library. Okay, two more of these. These are my, like, modern classics. They both came out in 2020. “Here the Whole Time,” I love this book so much. It’s written by Brazilian author Vitor Martins. It’s beautifully queer. It’s narrated by Felipe who, he starts the book this way. I’m just going to read the first two lines. “I’m fat. I’m not ‘chubby’ or ‘husky’ or ‘big-boned.’ I’m heavy, I take up space and people look at me funny on the street.” That’s how the book starts off. It has this really sweet powerful male-male love story, and the relationship between Felipe and his mother just jumps off the page. It’s really beautiful. And the last one, “Darius the Great Is Not Okay” by Adib Khorram. I love this book so much. It’s probably almost my favorite realistic fiction. Darius, the main character, who like Felipe in “Here the Whole Time” has this, like, really amazing self-deprecating voice that I just like go crazy over because I, I just love it. Darius calls himself a fractional Persian due to his mother’s Iranian heritage, and he never feels like he fits in. He has clinical depression. If you notice, all the books we’re talking about, right, have multiple, like, intersectionalities. He assumes he’s going to feel the same way when he takes a trip to Iran, and he doesn’t. This book is so tender and so sci-fi nerdy at the same time. I love it so much. There’s like so many “Star Trek” references dropped in there, and it also centers a queer character without it being a romance, which I think is really important. The follow-up book, “Darius the Great Deserves Better” is romantic, but “Darius the Great Is Not Okay,” he has a really deep friendship with Sohrab in Iran. But it’s, you know, being queer is obviously not just about, like, your relationships, and so this is like a beautiful book to have that representation in our libraries. Okay that’s all. That’s all I got. That’s not all I got, but that’s all I —

GONZALEZ: Thank you. No, I know. That would be, we had to basically kind of cut everybody off so that we — we could probably talk for two hours about different books. So thank you for those. Those sound really cool. Okay. Julie, Julia, finish us up with your recommendation. 

TORRES: Okay. I, I want to just also shout out “Darius the Great Is Not Okay” because I just think it is such an absolutely beautiful story. And I’m a freak about “Star Trek: The Next Generation” and “Picard.” If you haven’t watched “Picard,” you need to do that because the book, they’re both just such beautiful bookends. So I, I love those references in that book, and I think that a lot of our young people are picking up on some references that we might not pick up on. So that’s another reason to read the books that they read and get to know a little bit more about the, just to get to know a little bit more about the, the pop culture that, and not write it off as just something that is trendy or temporary, you know. And so the books I want to recommend just from me are “The Door of No Return,” Kwame Alexander. It’s a middle grade series. One of the reasons that I love it is that it gets into life in West Africa for an individual before they experience what happens once they come to the Americas. And I’m trying very hard not to ruin this for anyone. I’m sure you can tell a little bit about what happens in the book from the title, if you know anything about the Black experience. But one of the reasons that I also love “The Door of No Return” is that I, I just finished the follow-up to it, because it’s a three-part series. “The Door of No Return” is the first book. The middle book is called “Black Star” and it’s about a little girl who just wants to be a baseball player in the Negro leagues. And it is connected to “The Door of No Return” but in a way that I want you all to discover for yourself. It is so beautiful. It is so beautiful. “Black Star” is one of my favorite things, it might be my favorite thing that Kwame has written so far. It’s that beautiful. They’re written in verse, and it’s, it’s just a, such a wonderful way to tell the story of the Black experience in ways that acknowledge the trauma but don’t center it, so that we can, we can experience the fullness of what it means to be a person of African descent in the Americas. So highly recommend both “Black Star” and “The Door of No Return.” And then I wanted to take a minute to just talk about this book that I have not heard enough loudness about. It’s called “Monstrous: A Transracial Adoption Story.” And it is by a woman named Sarah Myer. It’s a graphic novel. They tell the story of growing up Korean in a, with white parents and in a, an experience that was full of microaggressions and other things but also of coming into themselves as a queer but also just nerdy, geeky, unusual, but also beautifully unique person. And I think that the story really uplifts all of those of us who have felt like nerds or freaks or who have been, had the finger pointed at us because we are not what people say we should be. So I just think that the story is really beautiful, and she doesn’t shy away from expressing pain and what it is like. Because I think that something adults forget is that the process of going from adolescence or from early adolescence through the teenage years into adulthood is full of pain. It’s, it’s full of joy, but there’s a lot of personal pain that we experience during those years, a lot of us. So I, I just think it’s such a beautiful story, and then the last one that I’ll recommend is, there are two that I wanted to recommend, but one in particular. And it’s from Dr. Bettina Love. For me, it is an educational classic. It’s called “We Want to Do More Than Survive.” And I just feel like if people have not heard of that book or Dr. Bettina Love’s work, you need to familiarize yourself with what she is doing as well as the people who founded the Black Teacher Project. Because Micia Mosely is phenomenal and has done some really important work there as well. 

LEWIS: I love it. 

GONZALEZ: Great recommendations. 

LEWIS: Yes. I’m making my shopping list right now. 

GONZALEZ: Yeah, I know. People aren’t going to be able to see this, but everybody who is not talking is just writing furiously. I love when, like, I hear librarians give recommendations and the other librarians are like, oh wait, I don’t have that one yet. So that’s, that’s fantastic. We will be providing links over on my site to all of these so that people can, you know, jump on that excitement and go and get those. So one more time before we go, just remind us. Like, one spot where people can go as, like, a hub to find you online. Where would be a great place for people to find you online. Cicely, where should they go? 

LEWIS: So I live heavily on Instagram now. I’m not really active on X anymore. Trying to protect my space. So Instagram @cicelythegreat. Humbly, I am @cicelythegreat. And, and I, my students say that Facebook is for old people, but I’m also on Facebook. And you can always find me at the hashtag #ReadWoke. And I have a website, www.readwoke.com. And so hit me up. I would love to talk with you. And check out my column in the School Library Journal. It’s called “Read Woke.” And I would love to get more recommendations. I might, you might see some of these books you recommended today in the column, Julia and Julie. So thank you for doing my work for me. 

GONZALEZ: Okay. Julia, where can they find you online? 

TORRES: You know, these days I am also probably most active on Threads, I would say. 

GONZALEZ: Okay. 

TORRES: I would say Threads, which is attached to Instagram and then after Threads, probably LinkedIn, and then after LinkedIn X and Instagram are kind of equal, for as far as, like, where I’m the most active. 

GONZALEZ: Okay. 

TORRES: I do appreciate the direct reach out. So you can reach out to me through my website. Just there’s a form, you can fill it out, and I will email you back. Or I can, I don’t, I also don’t mind giving people my email address. We can just put that in the notes for the podcast. I, I’m a fan of people who have questions or want to talk about things to just reach out to me directly, not an issue. 

GONZALEZ: Okay, great. Okay, and Julie. 

STIVERS: Just like everyone else, gosh, Twitter used to be, like, such a, a wonderful digital PLN. I’m on it but not as active. So I’m @bespokelib on Twitter, X, but also on Linktree. Everything is on Linktree so, including an email. Because the same, I, I love helping librarians, like, get more money to buy books, to buy books and build a collection that’s inclusive of all of our students. 

GONZALEZ: Okay. Thank you all so, so much. This has gotten me, I want to get out there and buy all of these books and read them. I’m so excited. So I’m hoping people listening are going to do the same thing, and this has just been super helpful. Thank you so much. 

TORRES: Thank you for having us. 

LEWIS: Yes, thank you so much. 

STIVERS: And thank you, Jenn, for compiling this.

For a full transcript of this episode and links to all the books and other resources we talked about today, visit cultofpedagogy.com, click Podcast, and choose episode 237. To get a bimonthly email from me about my newest blog posts, podcast episodes, courses and products, sign up for my mailing list at cultofpedagogy.com/subscribe. Thanks so much for listening, and have a great day.