At the beginning of each school year, teachers flock to public and school libraries in search of familiar or new back-to-school books to read to classes as they welcome students to a new school year. There is no shortage of titles from which to choose. Typical displays in most libraries showcase dozens of choices. Many picture book series feature a well-known character going back to school. Froggy, the Pigeon, the Pout-Pout Fish, Llama Llama and Lola are just a few familiar characters who face their fears and find that school is a happy place. ​

As yet another unusual school year is drawing to a close, we remain grateful for all the teachers who worked through novel challenges, who never lost sight of their students as humans with curiosities and the desire to learn, and who continued to share all kinds of books with them. Books that spoke to who individual students are and affirmed and bolstered their identities, books that allowed them to glimpse ways and experiences different than their own, and books that fed their wonderings and offered well-researched information about the world. Books they would have picked up anyway but got to experience and think about with others through their classroom communities, and books they would have never read if it weren't for a teacher or a librarian setting them in their hands.

As you are shifting to your summer rhythms, we hope that you will be afforded time for rest and rejuvenation and that you will find plenty of fascinating new reads for both your personal and professional reading stacks.

• If you are looking for recommendations for wonderful new works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry written for children, check out our 2022 Notable Children’s Books in the Language Arts.
• You will also find plenty of recommended titles and connected curricular ideas right here on the CLA Blog.  Simply click on the Archive links on the right-hand menu to access our posts in chronological order or the Category links for a thematic search.
  
• Another rich professional learning resource for your consideration is the Journal of Children's Literature, whose current and past issues are available to CLA members through our Website.

If you are a CLA member, we also encourage you to consider applying for one of the CLA grants and awards to support your professional activities for the coming academic year.

• If you are a college student who is planning to attend the 2022 NCTE Convention, consider applying for the Vivian Yenika-Agbaw Student Conference Grant (Deadline July 1, 2022)
• If you are an educator of any level who is planning a professional learning experience in literacy education, consider applying for the Bonnie Campbell Hill National Literacy Leader Award (Deadline August 15, 2022)
• If you are planning to do research related to children's literature, consider applying for the CLA Research Award (Application and Deadline information will be available shortly)

Information about the three awards and how to apply can be accessed below.

Happy Summer to all and we look forward to "seeing" you in the fall when the CLA Blog returns!

Warmly,

Xenia, Lauren and Liz
Co-editors of the CLA Blog

Over the last two years, we’ve enjoyed sharing excerpts from The Biography Clearinghouse website. We hope that our interviews with book creators and our teaching ideas focused on using biographies for a variety of classroom purposes has been helpful to the CLA membership and beyond. This month, we’re very excited to share something different - a voice directly from the classroom.  

Melissa Quimby, a 4th grade teacher in Massachusetts, has written the inaugural entry in our new feature “Stories from the Classroom.” Melissa is the genius behind #MeetSomeoneNewMonday, a weekly initiative that has spread from her classroom to her grade level team to an entirely different school in just three years. 

This initiative launched when Melissa decided to share her passion for picturebook biographies with her students through interactive read-alouds. They were hooked! As Melissa writes, “Over time, I molded this project in intentional ways, and it evolved into an adventure that focused on identity, centered marginalized and minoritized communities, and cultivated thoughtful, strategic middle grade readers.” What started as a way to share nonfiction picturebooks as an engaging and compelling art form developed into a more nuanced exploration of global changemakers–past and present. With their weekly reading of picturebook biographies, students grow as readers and thinkers and deepen their individual and collective sense of agency. 

In the following excerpts, Melissa describes how she reveals each week’s notable changemaker to her students and shares some of her picturebook biography selections.

Hair plays a vital role in a Black person’s identity, especially as Black children grapple with understanding how they belong. Historically, Black hairstyles originating from Africa could identify a region, a person’s age, religion, or status in society, and in some cultures, hair has spiritual connections (Dabiri, 2020).

Reintroduced into the conversation through The Crown Act, even in education, Black hair has been policed through discriminatory school codes and policy standards, widening the marginalization against culturally inclusive, responsive, and sustainable identity practices. 

Black hair has been subjected to colorism, discrimination based on color, and texturism; the belief that certain hair textures are better than others. Based on enslavement and Western standards of beauty,  the idea of "good hair," straight more European, and "bad hair," hair that is curlier and kinkier, creates a standard of sociocultural standards that are a source of contention to this very day (Byrd, 2001). 

Culturally responsive teaching involves incorporating culture, knowledge, language, perspectives, and experiences into the curriculum and instruction for more engaging and meaningful learning experiences (Ladson-Billings, 2009). Educators may not be culturally proficient or prepared through teacher education programs to connect with the nuances of relationship building and teaching diverse student populations (Gay, 2002). In this post, I share books and resources for educators to learn and understand the importance of the representation and appreciation of Black hair for students from kindergarten through-8th grade. 

The Story of Afro Hair (Upper-Elementary-High School) 
Centered from a Black British perspective, Chimbiri’s non-fiction book The Story of Afro Hair sensitively tells a detailed account of the history of Black hair. This stylized journey details hairdos, products, innovations, the science of Black hair, and the philosophy behind styles, like locks. 

Also included in the back matter are a glossary and additional references.

Cornrows (Elementary-Middle School) 
Cornrows is a fictional story that intertwines and connects the history and pride of Black culture through hair design. Released in 1997, Yarbrough's book, told through the storytelling of Great-Grammaw, inspires pride, hope, and courage. 

Both books provide an entryway to a discussion on Black hairstyles, through cultural understanding and historical significance. 

Then, in January, my son mentioned a book he had read, Infinite Powers: How Calculus Reveals the Secrets of the Universe by Steven Strogatz. “Oh,” I said. “Sounds interesting. Did you read it for your calculus class?”
 
“Yes,” he said. “And I really enjoyed it.”
 
Did his statement about enjoying a book wake me up to my implicit bias? No. But I did feel a shift inside me. I was pleasantly surprised and excited because I love talking about books. If he had read something and was excited about it, I could read it and discuss it with him, even if he had only read it because it was a class assignment. Here was a way I could deepen my relationship with him as an adult. Even if it was just a one-time occurrence.
 
I asked if I could read the book when he was done, and he brought it home the next time he visited.
 
Fast forward to February break. As my husband and I were packing for a trip to Maui to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary, he spotted Infinite Powers in the pile of books I was sorting through on our ottoman and picked it up.
 
“What’s this?” he asked. When I explained, he asked if he could take it to Hawaii, and I nodded. I hadn’t read it yet because, to be honest, reading a whole book about calculus felt too daunting. Instead, I packed and read three books from Kate Messner’s  History Smashers series and Rukhsanna Guidroz’s Samira Surfs.

I also spotted a copy of Kristin Hannah’s  Fly Away in our condo. Since I had watched Hannah’s Firefly Lane on Netflix and was listening to The Four Winds on Libby, I couldn’t resist picking up Fly Away, and I devoured it in a day.
 
As my husband and I sat side-by-side reading on the beach, we talked about Infinite Powers. He told me that while he was enjoying the book, the author gave way too much credit to calculus and not nearly enough to physics.
 
He was kind of cranky about it. Actually, he was truly irritated. I was surprised that he was having an emotional response to the book, a nonfiction book. It had stirred up passion inside him, even though it wasn’t a novel.
 
Did his passion wake me up to my implicit bias? Not yet. But I did feel another shift. He was expressing emotion about a book, and I was listening. In the past, it had almost always been me expressing emotion about a novel and him listening.

In our almost thirty-year relationship, I could only think of one other time when he had emoted about a book. It was Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! by Richard Feynman, which I read because he had read it multiple times and was so excited about it.
 
When we got back home, I spotted this petition (which you can still sign) on Twitter. Two professors of literacy,  Mary Ann Cappiello and Xenia Hadjioannou, had written a letter asking The New York Times to add three children’s nonfiction bestseller lists—one for picture books, one for middle grade, and one for young adults. I signed it because, of course, I fully supported nonfiction writers and readers!
 
A couple of weeks later, I saw on Facebook that, even though more than 2,000 people had signed the petition, The New York Times had refused to add children’s nonfiction bestseller lists. After a full day of teaching, I was tired, and reading this unfortunate news made me angry. I looked up from my phone.

Across the room, my younger son, who was home on spring break, was reading The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory by Brian Greene for fun because he had liked Infinite Powers so much and wanted to keep reading and learning. Next to him, my husband was reading an article about the Green Bay Packers on the internet.

In that instant, a lightbulb clicked on in my mind, and an awareness of my implicit bias washed over me like a tidal wave.
 
My husband and younger son are readers. They have always been readers.
 
I just didn’t realize it because narratives and fiction aren’t their jam. But give them nonfiction on topics they find fascinating—math, physics, sports—and they’re all in. They’re curious people who read to learn. They want to know about the world, how it works, and their place in it.
 
The decisionmakers at The New York Times seem to have their own implicit bias against children’s nonfiction, and as long as they do not include lists highlighting these books, they’re failing to acknowledge the 42 percent of our youth who crave true texts. They’re also failing to open the eyes of adults who raise those kids, thinking they’re not readers.
 
Maybe we should petition The Wall Street Journal next.