SLJ: The Diversity Issue.

Click on through for a whole ton of articles and essays and recommendations and commentary.

Here are just a few tidbits:

• Although I’ve described myself as “half-Peruvian” or “half-Jewish” as a shortcut in the past, I fully reject those terms now. I am not half of anything. I am whole in myself, as are my daughters. I am the Latina daughter of a Latina woman. I am bilingual. Melodia is the African-American daughter of African-American parents. She is also Guatemalan and Scottish. We are the face of a complex, multiracial, multilingual, and diverse past, present, and future.
• “Kids in general are often so grateful to have someone show an interest in their lives and accept them for who they are,” she says. “I had one kid in my first year who spent a fair amount of time talking with me, often about having crushes on boys. He sent me a private message last year saying, ‘I never thanked you for encouraging me to be myself.’ That means something to me, even three years later.”
• But one thing that librarians can do is to buy the books that are out there now. Read them. Know them well enough that they become the go-to books when making recommendations or creating bibliographies. Share them with children of all kinds, not just because they are multicultural, but because they are good books.

Click through for MUCH MUCH MORE.