So, a while back I wrote the majority of a grant for our library from the Indiana Humanities and was succesful. The grant was to promote racial equity after the murder of George Floyd. We decided to write the grant to fund the creation of storytime and bookclub kits. We ended up with 7 new bookclub kits and 3 storytime kits. There’s a small write-up of our new collection here!
The titles had to be chosen from a pre-existing list, so for the tween bookclubs we went with:
- Ghost Boys by Jewell Parker Rhodes
- Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Boy by Tony Medina
- Let’s Talk About Race by Julius Lester
- New Kid by Jerry Craft
- This Book is Anti Racist by Tiffany Jewell
- Not My Idea by Anastasia Higginbotham
- A Good Kind of Trouble by Lisa Moore Ramée
The preschool storytime kits all had the same 4 titles:
- Something Happened in Our Town by Marianne Celano
- All the Colors We Are by Katie Kissinger
- Strictly No Elephants by Lisa Mantchev
- I Walk With Vanessa by Kerascoët
I, and some coworkers, K & A, wrote up discussion questions, activities, and tips for talking about race. The kits are meant to be used by a grownup and their children, a classroom setting, within singular family units, or even among peers to facilitate discussions and bias-unpacking among children and their adults.
I used one of the bookclub kits to do our Tween Reads bookclub program. We all read A Good Kind of Trouble by Lisa Moore Ramée about a young girl navigating friendship, race, and identity as a trial for the murder of a black man wraps up in her town. Interwoven in the story are great examples of microaggressions, the importance of identity and having others support, and civic engagement.
I was SO PLEASED with the way the bookclub turned out. We had about 6 tweens (ages 7-12) show up virtually for the program. We did a quick ice breaker, went over and created some safe space rules, discussed the book, and finally did a craft (participants picked up the kits from our curbside service earlier in the month). The kind of discussion that went on was just so revitalizing! The kids picked up on some great connections in the book to current events and were so engaged with each other, talking about race issues, friendship, and even consent – which is briefly touched on in the book. The most inspiring thing was one kid talking about how they felt afraid going to protests sometimes because of what they’ve seen on the news. The other kids then quickly began brainstorming other ways that the original kid could fight for racial equity that they felt more comfortable with. It was absolutely heartwarming.
If you’re interested in taking a peek at the kinds of activities and guides we produced, check out the download below for “A Good Kind of Trouble.” Thanks to our marketing team for making it look gorgeous and fun!
My coworker, K, leads some of our Tween Reads bookclubs, too. K’s most recent club was on Guts by Raina Telgemeier. They made worry dolls for their craft in that session. It was such a nice idea to go along with the theme of anxiety for the book!
K and I are pretty like-minded when it comes to our programs, philosophies, and strategies. Some of the things we’ve been trying to do with our bookclub programs and collections is to diversify it. Before our efforts began, we had 10 bookclub kits. Only one of them had a character who was not white as a main character. So, we’ve been adding in diversity (racial, socio-economic, ability, etc) and also getting high-interest titles like graphic novels and other titles that are really appealing to kids in the 7-12 year old range. We’ve gotten such great feedback from the patrons on this!
Librarian Ginny 