![](\"http:\/\/wordpress.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/GL_elephant1-2-2.jpg\")
<\/a>Grace Lin’s beautiful contribution to one of my earliest ShelfTalker posts\u2014almost seven years ago\u2014about the (literally) ivory tower of publishing. Not enough\u00a0has changed since then. Click on the image to see a dozen more powerful pieces of art created by\u00a0artists we invited to address\u00a0the topic.<\/p><\/div> An easy, low-cost way to act locally, effectively, and meaningfully to help all children feel welcome in the shared world they live in.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20233"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20233\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nGreetings from chilly Minneapolis, which hosted\u00a0this year’s Winter Institute\u00a0(the bookselling community’s annual educational conference). I won’t recap the conference; Publishers Weekly<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Shelf Awareness<\/a>\u00a0have posted terrific photos and highlights from the sessions,\u00a0like the phenomenal breakfast keynote by Roxane Gay, who took the entire book industry to task not only for its continued lack of\u00a0inclusiveness at a systemic level, but for complacently allowing inclusion efforts to stop at inviting people of color to participate\u00a0 on panels, and for expecting people of color to lead the way and do the work of\u00a0activism for us. (Read more of her comments\u00a0here, thanks to\u00a0Shelf Awareness<\/a>.)
\nGay’s\u00a0rallying cry reinforced and galvanized passionate booksellers, who raised concerns and calls to action throughout the weekend, especially at\u00a0the well-attended Town Hall Meeting. The wheels of righting racism grind exceeding slow, but many booksellers, publishers, and American Booksellers Association staff and board members are heading home with renewed determination, ideas, and fire in the belly to take meaningful action.
\nIn addition to stepping up my own efforts to\u00a0do outreach to make our bookstore staff more diverse, I’ve decided to focus energy on a program I’ve wanted to implement for two years. It’s an idea I first heard from blogger and literacy activist\u00a0Edi Campbell<\/a>\u00a0at a conference on diversity in publishing. Brilliant in its simplicity, this is something just about any individual can do for a few dollars a month, and something\u00a0any bookstore can help\u00a0scores of individuals to accomplish: adopt one classroom and donate a book each month to the classroom’s library. That’s it!\u00a0<\/strong>The donated books\u2014celebrating the rich tapestry of people who share this nation\u2014will be wonderful, engaging, and inclusive, and at the end of the year, the classroom will have a dozen new\u00a0titles (two in September and December, and two in May for schools that end in May).
\nMy plan for the store’s Adopt-a-Classroom Program\u00a0is this:
\nWe will introduce the Adopt-a-Classroom\u00a0Program to customers and teachers, explaining how it works: customers will come to the store or use our website to choose one\u00a0book each month to donate to a preschool, kindergarten, or elementary school classroom. The chosen books must feature\u00a0real or fictional characters who are traditionally underrepresented in literature, so that the recipient classroom library becomes\u00a0richer, more inclusive, and welcoming for all students, helping them see themselves and others reflected on the pages of their books.
\nThe bookstore will offer customers our educator discount for these purchases.
\nWe will help match customers with classrooms in need if they don’t already have a classroom in mind.
\nFor customers desiring some guidance on what to donate, we will have\u00a0lists of recommended books for preschool and grades K-3, 4-5, and 6-8. We will also use as a resource\u00a0our World Full of Color database<\/a> of more than 1,300 books featuring main characters of color in a multitude of stories\u00a0that are not primarily driven by issues of race.
\nWe will invite teachers to share\u00a0any wish list\u00a0books with us\u00a0(as long as those books fill the inclusive mission of this program).
\nThis is just the kernel of the plan. There are so many ways to be creative and expand on the idea!
\nOnce we have the information sheet written and designed, and the logistical mechanisms in place, I’ll post again and share the materials so that other bookstores can use them as a springboard.
\n***
\nWinter Institute colleagues, what plans are you bringing home to your stores?
\nP.S. It’s also almost February and Black History Month, so I wanted to direct\u00a0people back to the September post, A Joyful Diversity Collection<\/a>, which, among other titles,\u00a0features many books about African-American heroes, explorers, inventors, scientists, artists, musicians, doctors, social innovators, and so much more. In these dark days, it’s even more important to add\u00a0JOY, triumph, inspiration, and hope to your Black History Month displays!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"