I’m back from ALA Midwinter and taking a quick break before hustling off to lead some teacher professioanl development.  More on Midwinter soon, but in honor of MLK Day, here are some announcements to help you think about future collection development purchases.

WHO WON THE CALDECOTT? NEWBERY? CORETTA SCOTT KING? AND MORE?
All of LibraryLand is abuzz today with the announcement of ALSC’s leading literary awards for children’s and young adult literature, including the Newbery, Caldecott, and Coretta Scott King Awards.  But you didn’t have to travel to slushy, sleety Boston to hear the news.  See the list of winners here.

DEVELOPING RESPONSIVE, THOUGHTFUL MULTICULTURAL COLLECTIONS
Author Mitali Perkins gives some great tips for evaluating multicultural literature here in her outstanding April 2010 article for School Library Journal, “Straight Talk on Race: Challenging the Stereotypes in Kids’ Books.” Her ideas have helped me think with more respect and depth about the role of non-white, non-middle characters in books for kids and what it truly means to have a responsive, multicultural collection.  Consider forwarding the link to your teachers, too — so many classroom collections are built on garage sale or public library Friends sales, which makes those collections particularly vulnerable to outdated views of gender, race, and culture.

Last night, I posted the reflection assignment I gave my grad students, in which they synthesized their beliefs about media/literature for children and young adults.

This morning, I woke up to Tweets pointing me toward Jon Scieszka’s own manifesto on the Huffington Post.  He reflects on his year as National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature and concludes with his own beliefs on kids and reading. 

Amazing — his ideas sync perfectly with those of my students.

So … what’s your manifesto?

I’m sitting in our classroom as my children’s lit  (aka, “Media for Children and Young Adults”) students do a pair of reflection projects.  First, they reflect as a group about the major ideas and themes of the course.Then, I ask them to reflect alone. The instructions:

This semester, you’ve heard a lot about what I believe about literature and resources for children and young adults.  Now that you’ve reflected on the course content, what do you believe about selecting media for children & YA?You can write your response as:

• a “This I Believe” essay
• a policy statement
• a Children/YA Bill of Rights
• a philosophical statement for your portfolio
• something else

I like spending the final hours of a course having students synthesize the ideas so that they can leave the course reminded of all we have done, but I’ve only this year added the individual reflection.So … what do I believe about media for children and young adults? I asked myself, watching them write, and I figured I should answer my own question.

I believe that books still matter and that they can help us grow our thinking and our world view.  They can make us laugh, teach us how to do things, or help us know our world.

While print books are still my preferred mode, I believe in multimodal and multimedia formats: digital texts, ebooks, audio books, audio mp3s, graphic novels, magazines, Web sites, and more.

Keeping kids reading is more important than being picky about what they read.  I am excited that we have passionate readers throughout our K-5 building.

I believe that our library collections should be real havens for pleasure reading, not just give lip service to that. 

I don’t expect my students to love what I loved, even if I wish they did.

I believe in library spaces that welcome children in and value them for who they are.

I believe in library spaces that build a sense of community and thoughtful excitement about learning.

I believe that library spaces should adapt to the needs of its users, not vice versa.  My hat is off to whoever invented casters for library furniture.

I believe that kids should be allowed to check out what interests them, not what is good for them or what is “on their level,” and that we should help them make good choices for their developmental level, not decide for them.

I believe that making good selections based on student needs and available budget is not censorship, no matter what School Library Journal put on its cover.

I believe that reader’s advisory is two-way: that I can recommend resources to kids, and that they can advise me right back.

I believe that libraries are safe places to explore new, unfamiliar ideas.I believe that a kid saying, “I love the library” should be the rule, not the exception.

I’ll close now so I can see what my students have to say.  Knowing their track record this term, it will be far more profound than what I have written.

What’s your manifesto?

{Post-class afterthought: I’m sitting in my office with tears in my eyes reading what they wrote. I’m a very lucky prof. Very lucky.}