The Singapore Red Dot Awards — an annual exercise in curating a basket of recent books for children in international schools

This piece was originally published on the Global Literature in Libraries Initiative blog — and is cross-posted here.

Collections of global literature for young people can be found all over Singapore — in the libraries of the 50+ international schools that serve the expatriate population of the city-state.

Singapore is a privileged “bubble” in Southeast Asia in so many ways (economically, culturally, educationally, etc.) — and international schools are a bubble within that bubble, given that Singaporeans are not allowed to attend them without special dispensation from the government, which prefers to educate their own citizens but needs attractive schooling options for the elite foreign workforce being enticed to relocate there. (Out of a population of 5.64m in 2018, 3.99m are citizens or permanent residents, while 1.64m are non-resident or expatriate — roughly 30%.)

The teacher-librarians in the international schools (which offer national curricula and/or International Baccalaureate programmes -- PYP, MYP, & DP), are a highly connected professional group via ISLN (the International Schools Library Network) — and they represent a good mix of nationalities themselves, as well as expat experiences.

Ten years ago ISLN started the Red Dot book awards — shortlists of recently published books from around the world worth promoting in their schools -- which means books worth buying multiple copies of and worth readers discussing. It was modeled on similar awards run by similar teacher-librarian networks in other countries (e.g., the Panda Awards in China and the Sakura Medal in Japan).

NB: "Red dot" is a proud epithet in Singapore, appropriated from a disparaging comment made years ago by the leader of a neighboring country. The island may be just a little red dot on the map, but the 54-year-old nation now exudes power and potential.

For the Red Dot book awards, eight titles (published or translated within the past four years) are selected in four age categories and students are encouraged to read as many as possible and then to vote for their favorite, with category winners announced for each school and for Singapore as a whole. The voting is just for fun -- there is no prize for the winning titles or authors. The real prize is the students actually reading the shortlists. (You can browse ten years of the book selections by clicking through the slideshows below.)

Early Years -- all shortlists -- on Goodreads

Younger Readers -- all shortlists -- on Goodreads

Older Readers -- all shortlists -- on Goodreads

Mature Readers -- all shortlists -- on Goodreads

For the ISLN teacher-librarians who participate in this annual exercise, the personal reward is found in the group process of choosing titles for the shortlists. I've blogged before about the evolution of the award -- and about the wide reading we go through looking for the right ingredients to make up a balanced basket of offerings, always discovering books we love, even if they don't make the shortlist.

I've also written about the difficulty in ensuring the diversity of our shortlists, remembering diversity is relative. So many of the lists of "best diverse books" for children are not very diverse from an international point of view. Nadine Bailey (another former ISLN member, now working in Beijing) calls it the #NotOurDiversity problem. She speaks for all of us international school teacher-librarians in lamenting the lack of "mirrors" for our third-culture kids and diaspora clientele.

(Have we made mistakes? Yes, I cringe as I see the picture book version of "Three Cups of Tea" by Greg Mortenson on the first year's list -- as he is now known for his "Three Cups of Deceit.")

Ideally Singapore books would be included every year, but it doesn't always happen, given the fact that the baskets need to balance not only geographically but also in terms of genre, theme, setting, style, etc. This list in Goodreads shows the ones that have made the shortlists, including "Secrets of Singapore," a fascinating compendium of information by a mother/daughter team; a picture book biography of the founding father of Singapore ("A Boy Named Harry: The Childhood of Lee Kuan Yew"); and the superlative faux history about an artist growing up in Malaya/Singapore, "The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye" by a Malaysian graphic artist.

Books relating to the region are also highly desirable, e.g., "Earth Dragon, Fire Hare," a middle school novel by a New Zealand author about Malaya in 1948 featuring a Kiwi soldier and a Chinese Malay freedom fighter; "Tall Story," a (literally) fantastic story straddling the Philippines and the UK; and a gripping non-fiction account of the 2018 Thai cave rescue, "Rising Water."

Translations are the most important kind of “diversity” or “disruption” needed for the Anglo-centric collections in our schools. As Tiffany Tsao put it, 'power carves the channels that determine how Culture with a capital C flows among countries and their inhabitants.’ And the residual power of the historical British and American empires in Asia is evident in countries like Singapore (though it theoretically recognizes three other official languages — Mandarin, Malay, and Tamil).

We always welcome works in translations, as evidenced by these past Red Dot choices.

That's why this Global Literature in Libraries Initiative is so valuable, highlighting authors and works in different languages for us to read. I particularly appreciate their LibraryThing catalog of children's and YA literature (originals and translations) for Chinese, Japanese, Korean, German, Polish, and Spanish (so far).

Having said that, IBBY (the International Board on Books for Young People) is the most important source of information about global literature for children and young adults -- and it's always been a mystery to me why Singapore isn't a member (though I almost forgive them because of their annual Asian Festival of Children's Content (AFCC) which does so much to promote regional authors and illustrators). I moved to Thailand two years ago and was thrilled to be back in a country with an IBBY branch.

• IBBY Honour Books

• IBBY Booklist on Young People with Disabilities

• Bookbird journal (via Project Muse) - e.g., read this article by professor Kathy Short (think: Worlds of Words) based on a keynote she gave at the 2018 IBBY Congress in Athens: "The Dangers of Reading Globally."

• Biennial congresses - the next one is in Moscow, 5-7 Sep 2020, and the one after that is Malaysia, 5-8 Sep 2022 (and I expect all our active Asian teacher-librarian networks to be fully contributing)

The Bologna Children's Book Fair, where every April countries converge in Italy to exhibit and exchange publishing rights, is strongly connected to IBBY -- and is a wonderful place to physically browse the best of children's books internationally. Next month is its sister event, the Shanghai Children's Book Fair, and I'm hoping some fellow teacher-librarians will be attending and passing on books to watch out for in translation.

I was lucky enough to be at the Bologna Children's Book Fair this past April when the winner of the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award was announced. When the crowd around me heard the name "Bart Moeyaert," it burst into wild cheers and clapping. But my colleague Philip Williams and I just looked at each other in embarrassment and said, "Who?" A quick search on our phones for books to immediately order revealed the disappointing news that no English translations of his work are still in print (though I trust the re-publishing wheels have started turning since then). Knowing about good authors and books is only half the battle.

In seeking books to put on a Red Dot shortlist, we have often come up against the problem of availability, e.g., does a translation exist?, is the book still in print?, and/or is it easy for our schools to order the book and get it delivered to Singapore?

Awards, no matter how small (like the Red Dot), create ripples of awareness. That's why we teacher-librarians watch each others' awards closely, looking for titles to read and potentially add to our own collections or shortlists, e.g.,

• the Panda Awards in China

• the Sakura Medal in Japan

• the Golden Dragon Awards in Hong Kong

• the Morning Calm Medal in Korea

• the Bangkok Book Awards in Thailand

But it's frustrating if you can't easily get your hands on books from other countries.

For example, Nadine Bailey and I are both judges for the Neev Book Awards, a relatively new award looking for "high-quality children's literature from India" leading to "a fuller understanding of India, Indian lives, and Indian stories." This year the winning title in the Neev YA category is "Year of the Weeds" -- a book we passionately recommend -- and one which pairs perfectly with a former Red Dot title from Canada, "Blue Gold" -- as both highlight the human costs of mining metals to feed our appetites for the latest technology.

While the Canadian novel is readily available via sites like Amazon.com or Book Depository, the Indian one is not (yet). Yes, it is listed on the Amazon India website, but people outside of India can't use that (without a credit card registered to an address in India).

I know both Nadine and I will be advocating for "Year of the Weeds" to our colleagues on the Bangkok Book Awards and Panda Awards committees (the local ones we now serve on, having cut our teeth in Singapore on the Red Dot Book Awards). Getting copies will be tricky, but we're working on ways to help others get a chance to read this brilliantly humorous novel that offers an insightful critique of the abuses of democracy and capitalism through the lens of the Gond tribe, an indigenous people of India. (If you aren't familiar with the Gond, please seek out "The London Jungle Book" -- as you will never forget the arresting images and metaphors the author/illustrator employs to explain his culture in that picture book memoir.)

Following and participating in awards like the Red Dots is invaluable for those of us entrusted with expanding the arena of possible discovery for young people. As Dr. Edith Ackermann so eloquently expressed it, "We have a responsibility to introduce children to things they don't yet know they will love."

I view these annual award exercises as formative assessments, where the "canon" taught in our schools (or stored in our book cupboards) is the equivalent of summative assessments. We librarians can help those canons evolve by continuously exploring world literature in order to provide new, refreshing, mind-expanding reading material -- for our students and our teachers.

Prizing Balance: an exploration of world children's literature

NOTE:  This is a reproduction of my 30-minute (whirlwind) presentation at the Librarians' Knowledge Sharing Workshop held in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, in November 2017.  I have tried to note which slides relate to which points, within the text below.

Diversity is a hot topic in children’s and YA literature at the moment, but for us working as school librarians in international schools, it’s always been an issue as we strive to provide access to texts that reflect our varied student populations, curriculum concerns, local context, and worldview.

NETWORK-BASED ANNUAL BOOK AWARDS

One of the most fertile channels for discovering new literature to bring into our schools is the annual book award shortlists generated by country-based international school librarian networks.  Most of you in the audience have participated in one or more of these, whether getting your students to read and vote on the books or working with your network colleagues to help choose books to shortlist every year. 

Of all the experiences of being in a locally-based international school teacher librarian network like ISLN in Singapore or BLISS in Bangkok, the most rewarding aspect for me has been being involved in the running of their annual book awards.  Serving on such a committee means belonging to a group dedicated to finding books that would be great book group choices for students of different ages.  I love the ongoing purposeful interaction with other teacher-librarians, as we struggle to satisfy our criteria and deadlines.

Asia seems to be where this international school library phenomenon started. (Slide 2)

When Barb Reid and I began the Red Dot book awards in Singapore, now in its 9th year, we were inspired by China with its Panda Awards and Japan with its Sakura Medal.  Later, Hong Kong, Korea, and Thailand set up awards, as did Switzerland and Germany.  More recently I discovered the Jarul Award in India, which is for picture books published in India.

• Singapore: Red Dot Awards
• China: Panda Awards
• Japan: Sakura Medal
• Hong Kong: Golden Dragon Book Awards
• Thailand: Bangkok Book Awards
• South Korea: Morning Calm Medal
• Switzerland: Golden Cow Bell Awards
• Germany: Hansel and Gretel Award
• India: Jarul Book Award 

All the awards listed above have varying criteria and structure:  in their number of list categories (e.g., Singapore produces 4 lists, Bangkok 3), number of titles on a list (e.g., Singapore has 8 titles per list, Bangkok 6), criteria for inclusion (e.g., published how recently - Singapore is the past 4 years, Bangkok the past 5), timing of the shortlist announcement/voting cycle, and activities related to the annual results (e.g., Singapore has had a Readers Cup competition, Switzerland produces literal Swiss cow bells (custom-cast) to send to each author-winner).

The less concrete but more important selection criteria - e.g., "excellence" but also "diversity of author, theme, genre, setting and narrative style" (Bangkok Book Awards) - are an ongoing challenge (as I will discuss in detail further on).

Each network also has its own time, space, and financial constraints regarding the process of determining a longlist and shortlist. 

Is it easy to meet in person to discuss books, or is the book group in effective a virtual one?  Does that determine how many people can be on the committee?  Who should provide input to the longlist -- and shortlist?  (What about students?)  How many people will have time to read or ability to access each longlist book in order to contribute to the shortlist decision? Given the budget/acquisition cycle in the school or country, when is the ideal time to publish the shortlists so books will be in the hands of students soon enough and long enough to be able to vote?  (And how important is the voting element anyway?)

BOOK AWARD MODELS

Let's step back and consider four major models of book awards.  (Slide 5)

• Popular Survey -- one person, one vote -- epitomized by the BBC Big Read (first famously done in 2003) and the annual Goodreads Choice Awards.  These awards are summative and democratic in nature.  One such annual popular survey for children's literature is the K.O.A.L.A. (Kids Own Australian Literature Award), which has been going for 31 years now (more re this award below).

• Professionally Curated "Best of" Booklists -- the most obvious examples for children's literature are the annual national ones, often organized by library associations, such as the US Newbery/Caldecott, the UK Carnegie/Greenaway, the Australian CBCA "Book of the Year", the Canadian CCBC Book Awards, and the NZ Book Awards -- though there is also the international biennial IBBY Hans Christian Andersen ones for authors/illustrators.  These are summative within a year, but formative over time of a canon.
   
• Book Tournaments via Brackets -- where pairs of books are pitted against each other in a series of rounds until a final winner is declared (by a judge or team of judges).  In children's literature the most prominent example is School Library Journal's annual "Battle of the Kids' Books" -- though there are adult ones as well, e.g., The Morning News Tournament of Books.  Note there is a free online app called BracketCloud that allows anyone to set up their own single or double elimination brackets, e.g., see this description of having students set their own personal reading challenges using Google Drive -- so they are the "judge."
   
• One Book, One Community - Not really an award, but a popular reading initiative where a particular book is chosen (by professionals) for a group (whether grade, school, city, or state) to read and discuss within a given time span.  See this Wikipedia entry for many examples of such a shared book experience.  A powerful way to extend this would be to choose a title that has different editions, i.e., picture book version, young readers edition, and adult edition (including print, digital, and audio formats), so a wider range of readers can participate.

Most of our network awards fall into the "professionally curated" bucket.  And most of us then have the students vote for their own personal favorite such that winners can be announced.  However, a point of criticism has been that students are only able to vote for something on a list that an adult has pre-selected -- which can be called a delusion of democracy.

But what's the important thing here?  The lists?  The books?  The reading?  Student agency in determining lists?  The structured competition? 

Perhaps we need to ask ourselves:  Why?  Why did our networks set up these awards?  Why does each school participate each year?  The answers vary.

For example, the instigation for the Red Dot Book Awards in Singapore grew out of Barb Reid and I being concerned about the multiple copies of the "same old books" sitting on the shelves in the primary school reading cupboards, reflecting "classics" from the dominant culture of teachers working in our respective international schools. 

We wanted a reading initiative that would allow us to regularly refresh the book cupboards with recent literature reflecting the diversity of our community and supporting our school values of internationalism -- i.e., books worth buying multiple copies of and discussing.  The professionally curated "award" list was a good vehicle because what we really wanted was to invest in some books for a "one book, one community" reading experience.  Voting for the "best book" from the shortlist is just a diversionary tactic -- to encourage the reading.

I'm now thinking I want to complement that kind of award with an annual popular survey one -- to address the goal of kids sharing their favorite reading with the community, no matter where the books come from.   For that kind of a "children's choice" popularity contest I am inspired by the K.O.A.L.A. awards in Australia, which I learned about while visiting Cranbrook Junior School in Sydney a few months ago. (Slide 6)

Megan Light, the primary teacher-librarian there and one of the award's administrators, explained how the annual awards are structured to be both formative and summative.  The shortlists are the top 10 books that kids nominate (criteria: Australian and published within the past ten years) in four age categories.  If titles are shortlisted five times without winning, then they go into the K.O.A.L.A. Hall of Fame (a wonderful summative list along with the cumulative winners list).  Megan pointed out that the nomination process is a good excuse to discuss the award's criteria with students, e.g., what makes a book Australian, how to check the "publication age" of a book, and what age of reader is a book best suited for.

THE CURATION TASK

In choosing books for the curated-list kind of award, we adults also sometimes struggle to figure out the right age category for a particular title, but the bigger challenge is in determining what set of titles in a category will satisfy the not-so-concrete criteria of having a "broad range of books" across the shortlist, which we all agree (to varying degrees) is important. (Slide 7)

Stealing ideas from other networks' annual shortlists is the easiest path.  Hence, there is a great amount of overlap between our choices, all the while coveting works from Asia as well as works in translation.  And we are all looking for books that relate to international issues.

Refugees are an obvious topical star at the moment.  Last year Singapore chose the Canadian title, "Stormy Seas" -- a large-format upper-primary/middle school picture book for older readers with parallel storylines of refugees from Nazi Germany, Vietnam, Cuba, Afghanistan, and the Ivory Coast -- which we in Bangkok have also selected.  Interestingly, Alan Gratz (USA) came out with a similar (chapter) book called "Refugee," featuring three narratives based on Nazi Germany, Cuba, and Syria. Sometimes we're just spoiled for choice! (Slide 8) 

I recently read a 2016 Routledge academic text devoted to analyzing children's books awards, with chapters written by different experts -- Prizing Children's Literature: The Cultural Politics of Children's Book Awards.  See Slide 9 for the cover, and slide 10 for a screenshot of the table of contents as well as the purchase price.  I suggest you peruse the free preview via Google Books before deciding whether to buy, though I highly recommend the contents on the whole. 

The chapter by Claire Bradford on Australian books (now eligible for the the US (ALA) Printz award) is particularly interesting, where the conclusion is that only Australian books that are not "too" Australian succeed in the American arena.  June Cummins's chapter on how the American Newbery is not really about excellence, but is instead an identity-based award, deserves attention -- as does her argument for the use of intersectionality theory. (Slide 11) 

A BALANCED MEAL

When it comes to generating a diverse shortlist, my best metaphor is the balanced meal (Slide 12) -- and this begs the question of what attributes or facets we should all be considering in terms of diversity.  

Luckily the people at Kirkus Review (in collaboration with Baker & Taylor, the booksellers) published some diversity collection lists last September, and I did a basic reverse-engineering of their taxonomy. (See Slides 13-17 inclusive.)

Pay attention!  Because all of us need to be considering our own library catalogs (and subject headings) in light of the work they've done, though their facets are aimed at the American context.

Kirkus tagged books by four diverse elements:  race/culture, religion, gender expression, and/or disability. (Slide 14) 

And for each of those, they then categorized the book to what extent that feature is present.  CENTRAL = central to the book; IDENTIFICATION = relevant to the plot; or INCLUSION = when the diverse element is part of the background or seems to be normal. (Slide 13)

Besides those attributes, they also looked at types of experience for the characters in the book in relation to the diversity (e.g., coming out, reckoning with, etc.) and whether they were lead characters, background characters, ensemble casts, or families.   Of course, they also considered what I would call "standard variables" -- e,g, genre, time (past, future, or present), and the age of the assumed reader. (Slide 15)

As international school educators, we also consider how books can be linked to our schools' values, mission statements, and curriculum.  For example, those of us working in IB (International Baccalaureate) schools are always on the lookout for books that reflect the Learner Profile as well as ones to support whatever PSE (personal, social, and emotional) curriculum is used (e.g., see this UWCSEA East Primary Libguide). (Slide 17)

If you're interested in a taxonomy for Social and Emotional Learning (SEL), look at the results of Myra Garces-Bacsal's ongoing project for the Office of Educational Research at the National Institute of Education (NIE) in Singapore (based on the CASEL project in the US), which she is publishing as a Social and Emotional Bookshelf on her blog.  The more raw tags for each book can be seen on her LibraryThing catalog for Gathering Books.

EXPANDING OUR BORDERS

As international schools, probably one of the most important elements of diversity we want to consider is geographic connections, whether local, national, or regional.  Like Kirkus's distinction between three degrees of representation of diversity in a book, we might consider three types of connection -- 1) geography as it relates to the characters or setting of the text; 2) the background or origin of the author; and 3) location of the publisher.

This raises the question of, who wrote it?  And who did they write it for?  Looking a book in terms of accuracy (e.g., did they get the details right?), authority (e.g., what culture is the author/publisher from?), and authenticity (e.g., is it realistic? from what perspective? is it convincing?).  (Slide 18)

In considering a book with a particular geographic orientation, we also have to ask questions in relation to the potential reader (i.e., students in our schools).  1) Will it appeal to them?  2) Is it easily available, in the sense, will we be able to source it and get it into our libraries? 3) Is it accessible to the reader (e.g., does it require background knowledge or a glossary or translation of terms in order to be understandable? how close it it to the students' current experiences?). (Slide 19)

For example, I recently read "A Moment Comes" by Jennifer Bradbury as part of the shortlist process for the BLISS Book Awards.  It's historical fiction set during the partition of India in 1947 and features three narrative perspectives (a Muslim boy, a Sikh girl, and a British girl).  Indian terms are used throughout -- and like a good reader, I persevered and tried to get the meaning from the context.  Only at the end did I discover a glossary, explaining all the terms, which would have been useful to me as I read along (sigh).  As the name "Jennifer Bradley" isn't particularly Indian, I did a bit of online sleuthing to determine whether she was writing from a position of accuracy and authenticity -- and it turns out she spent a year living in the Punjab.  (Slide 20)

Another book I read for the shortlist was "A Flame in the Mist" - fantasy historical fiction set in samurai Japan -- which also provides a glossary in the back that I also didn't realize was there until I finished the book (sigh sigh).  My research on the author, Renee Ahdieh, revealed she is an American whose mother is from South Korea, so she has Asian roots. (Slide 21)

For authenticity and accuracy about a geographical region, translations are the best bet -- and for the Red Dot Book Awards we have always tried to include them, watching the winners of awards like the Batchelder Award in the US and the Marsh Award in the UK.  Similarly the Hans Christian Andersen Award, probably the most important international children's book award, is an excellent source of books that provide geographical (and linguistic) diversity. 

One past choice -- "Moribito" by Nahoko Uehashi (winner of the 2014 Hans Christian Andersen) -- is a translation of a popular Japanese series that features a female samurai -- so a natural read-on recommendation for "A Flame in the Mist" mentioned above.  (Slide 22). 

"Bronze and Sunflower" by Cao Wenxuan (the 2016 winner and first Chinese author) has been a shortlist choice for several of the international school library book awards. Set during the Cultural Revolution, the slow-moving but heartwarming novel is part of a very popular series in China.   It's exactly the kind of book our students might not have discovered without our intervention.  One of our key functions is to expose readers to books they otherwise might have missed or books with slightly different writing styles due to cultural differences.  (Slide 23)

There is a wonderful blog and Facebook Group called the Global Literature in Libraries Initiative (GLII) which promotes books in translation. 

The founder, Rachel Hildebrandt, has recently organized people to develop online catalogs of children's and young adult literature in translation using LibraryThing.  The number of languages will only expand over time.  (Slide 24)

How are cultural differences bridged in texts?    How do authors and translators ease readers into unfamiliar territory and accommodate varying expectations (beyond the use of glossaries noted above)?

One of my favorite bloggers, Venkatesh Rao on Ribbonfarm, who usually writes about technology and business, published a blog post in 2009 called “The Rhetoric of the Hyperlink,” in which he discusses the choices available to writers in light of the issue of potentially different cultural markets.  NB: He was born in India but now lives and works in the US.

1). The Fishbowl Style - where you assume everyone is swimming in the same water of understanding - I.e. you don’t explain anything because you are writing from within a culture; 

2)  The Expository Style - where you (laboriously) explain everything as you go for “outsider” readers;

3). The Global Contextual Style - where local/global cultural analogies are made, e.g., reference a Bollywood actor, but compare them to a supposedly well-known Hollywood one;

4).  The Literary Way - what he calls the “Salman Rushdie method” — where you just write creatively and demand the reader work to construct meaning - or live with the opacity! 

Rao argues that hyperlinks offer such a great potential to writers today, to allow "Fishbowl" writing thanks to hyperlinks behind words that might require cultural explanation.  While this is common in online blog and journalistic writing, it has yet to be fully utilized in many (any?) of the ebooks available, especially not mainstream literature.  Instead the internet is assumed to be sitting there as one big online “glossary.” (Slides 25-26)

DEEPER INTO THE WORLD

When it comes to world fiction, there’s one book I highly recommend as a tool to improve the balance of your collection and the information in your catalog (i.e., intellectual access or subject headings): "The Complete World Guide to Contemporary Fiction" by Michael Orthofer. (Slide 27-28)

Unlike the previous book suggestion, this one is highly affordable - about US$15 for the ebook or paperback — plus he has an information-packed website of reviews.  In the book, Orthofer provides a narrative tour of authors from different countries or regions. This helps me look for titles in my collection that I need to add subject headings to, e.g., "Translations -- from BLAH language -- into BLAH language" -- as well as geographic connections.  (If you are fascinated by who would produce such a labor of love, read this 2016 New Yorker profile of Orthofer.)

Another resource you might consider if you’re really interested in what makes certain books culturally specific and to what extent those books are accessible to readers from other cultures, see this Routledge academic text "Subjectivity in Asian Children’s Literature and Film: Global Theories and Implications (Children's Literature and Culture)" edited by John Stephens, a professor of children's literature at Macquarie University in Australia.

See slides 29-30 for screenshots of the chapters and authors, which cover a range of Asian countries and formats.  Unfortunately this book is fairly expensive (even rented as a textbook),  but luckily many parts of it can be read via Google Books here.

TRACKING DIVERSITY

As we international teacher-librarians on the award committees come together each year to find a balanced list of titles, I’m always curious about how everyone tracks their reading over the year, looking for our variables of diversity.

Solving this problem of diversity -- what I called the "balanced basket" problem (in writing about the Red Dot Book awards back in 2014) -- can take up 80% of the time (according to the Pareto principle of 80/20 split).   In Singapore this often meant lugging bags of books to evenings meet-ups, sharing and swapping titles, in the hopes of getting someone else to confirm that a work would work perfectly to enhance our offerings.

In slide 31 are photos of some paper bookmarks we used at UWCSEA East to quickly record things about a book as we read it — what country it’s from, what values it connects with, genres, grade-level appropriateness, literary features, etc.  I use Goodreads in the same way - setting up bookshelves for each attribute.  Goodreads isn't the most perfect social reading site, but it is the most accessible.

This raises the question of how we provide intellectual access to the diversity of our collections through our library catalog.  One way to make these variables searchable is via subject headings.

For example, if we have two Follett Destiny catalogs at our school (primary and secondary) and both want to track books about gender issues, we might agree that both catalogs will use a local subject heading of "LGBT Plus - Gender roles - Free To Be@NIST" (where Free to Be@NIST is the name of the student group looking at gender issues).  This gets around the problem of teaching people what acronym to search for (LGBTQIAP+ or LGBTQ+ or GLBT, etc.).

When it comes to genre identification, our primary and secondary catalogs might use different terms when talking to students, so then we could each use a site-specific subject heading (rather than a shared local one), so only patrons of the secondary library would be able to search for and see "Genre - Realistic / contemporary fiction - NIST" -- whereas the primary library catalog might use just "Realistic fiction".  (Slide 32)

Slide 33 shows how we use subject headings to track which books in our catalog reflect values in the IB Learner Profile or ones associated with Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) -- as well as geographic connections.  (Slide 33)

WHAT'S IN A BALANCED BASKET?

So back to the problem of how our network committees get balanced baskets of shortlisted titles. 

How many aspects of diversity are we are looking for? 

Ensuring a range of genres is the usual starting place.  When I came to NIST, the Y8 team asked me to run sessions with the kids looking at these genres:  nonfiction, horror/supernatural, humor, fantasy historical fiction, realistic, science fiction/dystopia, and graphic books. (Slide 35)

But in talking to students about genres, I realized you can break them down more simply into three baskets based on a continuum, moving from unreal to real:  Unrealistic Fiction, Realistic Fiction, and Nonfiction. (Slide 36)

By applying the dimension of time (past, present, and future) to those three baskets, you can start to map more specific genres.  For example, if realistic fiction about the past is "historical fiction," then unrealistic fiction about the past might be "alternative history" or "historical fantasy" -- and nonfiction about the past is history or biography. (Slide 37)

Adding in an emotional response to a book gets you to more genres, e.g., realistic fiction in the present time could be either Mystery, Horror, Thriller, Humor, or Romance -- depending on the emotion it invokes.  Slide 38 shows some emoji-book-review bookmarks we use, asking students to consider whether a book made them cry, smile, think, or be scared.

But the basics are the three categories:  Unrealistic Fiction, Realistic Fiction, and Nonfiction.

What if each professional longlist reader for our book awards came to the table prepared with a basket of books, balanced for the following variables (while also adhering to the publication time conditions, e.g., with the past 4 years)?  (Slide 39)

• Genres (unrealistic fiction, realistic fiction, and nonfiction)
• Local / Regional / Global connection (whether author, setting, or publisher)
• Diversity / Social / Global issues
• Male/Female appeal
• Translation
• Format, welcoming any:
  • Graphic / Wordless
  • Verse novel
  • Poetry
  • Short stories

What tool might allow us to share our respective proposed baskets?  Barb and I dummied up a Padlet example -- see Slide 40.  It's just a suggestion.  We'll see how it goes in this next cycle of longlist to shortlist.

The geographical balance is often the hardest to ensure.  Working on the Red Dot Books shortlists, we might find ourselves with a great set of titles, but then suddenly realize when we looked more closely that we had no Australian books or no Canadian books -- and would have to go back through our longlist more carefully. How much easier if everyone had noted geographic connections as they read throughout the year.  

But we always got there in the end, as the backlist of shortlists over the past 9 years of the Singapore Red Dot books demonstrate (see them all here).  Getting the balance right takes time, but is so worth the effort.

LEADership and diversity

I've been reading and listening to Peter Senge, the leadership and management change guru, quite a bit recently.  He talks about the the root of the word "leader" being one who steps over the threshold, lifting their foot in vulnerability, and doing what's right for the whole, moving forward.  He says real cultural change is inquiry into our blind spots and letting go. (Slide 41)

We as teacher-librarians must be good leaders of diversity.  We can help our community ask, What is self? What is other?  Reading and noting what aspects of diversity resonate with each of us as we read can help.  We can't promote diversity without knowing ourselves and our own community. 

We have the power to put texts in the reach of our students that will speak across cultural thresholds.

Reading Constellations and Recommendations

Do you have favorite pairs of books you like to recommend to students?  Books where you see the connection, no matter how oblique, and use it to help people find the next "read-on" book?  Along the lines of "If you liked... then try...." kinds of lists -- but perhaps more nuanced.

Then please consider joining a Google+ Community called "Reading Constellations" -- which is a crowd-sourcing space for pairs or small bundles of books to recommend to students.

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Angie Erickson, a middle school literacy coach at our other campus, and I started it after realizing that we both had favorite pairings.

E.g., I recommend "Liar" by Justine Larbastier and "We were Liars" by E. Lockhart under the heading "Lies and terrible family secrets," and Angie recommends pairing "To Kill a Mockingbird" with "Jasper Jones" by Craig Silvey under the heading "Discrimination and crime and coming-of-age". 

We think of these constellations as micro-lists, where connections are perhaps in the eye of the experienced beholder and the number of books is too few to warrant utilizing the OPAC "create a list of related books" function (e.g., Resource Lists in Follett Destiny), which could be considered mini-lists, in contrast to the macro-list capability of a common Subject Heading in the OPAC.

Angie literally ties the books together in her classroom -- to make the connection explicit.

Crowd-sourcing, cameras, and summer reading

For the past two years I have solved the problem of summer reading lists by crowd-sourcing recommendations from our community via "Summer Shelfies." 

We set up a photo booth area in the library (with help from the Art Dept. and Dave Caleb, one of our digital literacy coaches who is a serious photographer) -- for backlit flashes against a white backdrop -- the kind of lighting that makes all of us look like models.

Individuals or whole classes line up with a book in hand and get captured on film.  I then post the results to a Google+ Photo Album.

Click here to see this year's results so far:  bit.ly/shelfies2015 -- and last year's:  bit.ly/shelfiesphotos

This year we asked for another possibility -- a #bookface creation.

The results can be seen here:  bit.ly/bookfaces2015

On reading and balance in four 8-book baskets -- and the ones that got away

The 2014-2015 Red Dot Book Award shortlists, the 8 books in four age categories we choose for our students to read, consider, and compare -- in order to determine a favorite -- for a school and for the island nation of Singapore -- have been announced.  I want to celebrate them, but also point out the books that almost made it -- and still could in a future year -- and certainly deserve a wider reading in the meantime.

You can read the background to our awards and criteria in a blog post I did a year ago -- see Looking Back: the evolution of the Red Dot Book Awards and the Readers Cup in Singapore.

Basically, we look at:   

• publication date (past four years, e.g., 2011-2014);
• ease of access (where a paperback version via one of the free-shipping online vendors (e.g., Book Depository or Fishpond.sg) is the ideal -- and an ebook available is a bonus);
• genre (one nonfiction? one graphic format? one poetry or verse novel? as well as a mix of fiction genres);
• gender (mix of female/male protagonists or appeal);
• country of origin or flavor (wanting a mix, but recognizing some countries just produce a whole lot more than others, and preferring at least one book with a Singapore or Asian connection);
• literary vs. popular appeal (considering whether a book is already played out in terms of popularity or likely to be popular -- as well as books that teachers will love for their literary, teachable aspects);
• appropriateness for the age categories of our award.  
• content, where we favor books with multiple possible connections -- text-to-text, text-to-self, and text-to-world.

Balance trumps everything -- which means every year there are perfectly good books that don't get in the basket, because they unbalance it in some way.  With just 8 slots, we don't really want two wordless books or two poetry books or two biographical books, etc.  So I thought it would be good to lay out what is in this year's baskets AND highlight some books we seriously wanted, which lost out in some way, due to the devil of the balance.  NB: most of the un-chosen titles are theoretically still in the running for next year's lists....

Here are this year's shortlists:

2014-2015 Early Years

ISLN (Int'l School Library Network) Singapore's favorite books »

Our international spread is pretty good:  2 USA, 1 Australia, 1 Iceland, 2 UK, 1 Canada, and 1 France.

We have one memoir (by Alan Rabinowitz, the large cat expert who suffered severe stuttering as a child, but found solace in speaking to animals -- listen to him tell the same story to grown-ups on this "The Moth" podcast).  One story of someone "different" finding a friend.  One non-fiction book of questions to consider, and a Peter Reynolds (of "The Dot" fame) story that considers creativity.  A beautiful French book which is a modern version of "stone soup".  A boy and his dog story that features learning Chinese.  A tale that connects creatures and humans from India all the way to Australia.  And a good-old-fashioned story of a young child befriending a lost lion, as well as a book by an Icelandic author where one unusual person finds a perfect match in another unusual person.

Click here for the longlist Early Years books we didn't choose...  including another French book (Bear's Song), a lovely simple Korean bedtime tale (Blanket Travel); the perhaps too-well-known-already Day the Crayons Quit; the latest-greatest from Peter Brown (My Teacher is a Monster); the rhyming fun of The Brothers Quibble which wasn't readily available; and the most recent wordless genius of David Wiesner (Mr. Wuffles!).

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2014-2015 Younger Readers

ISLN (Int'l School Library Network) Singapore's favorite books »

Our international spread is good:  2 USA, 1 Australia, 1 UK, 1 India, 1 Sweden, 1 Singapore, and 1 Germany.

We have one picture book biography of Lee Kuan Yew (appropriate as the 50th anniversary of Singapore is coming up next year).  A meta-fiction frolic from Jon Scieszka.  A similarly silly offering from the ever-beautiful Tara Books in India featuring an Inspector-Clouseau-type character.  A magical chapter book for young readers from the best-selling author of "Inkheart".  A beautiful-produced purple chapter book of historical fiction inspired (read article here) by Ada Lovelace (daughter of Lord Byron and the first female programmer).  An Australian knights-and-swords fantasy featuring Tommy, a kitchen girl (where there is a SGD 15 book -- "The Secret of Flamant Castle" available containing not just the first title -- "The Secret of the Swords" -- but a further five adventures -- so a bargain of a book in terms of reading on...).  And two realistic fiction chapter books, one about a boy in 2nd grade -- "The Year of Billy Miller" -- by the American Kevin Henkes, and the other about a girl just starting school -- "My Happy Life" -- by the Swedish Rose Lagercrantz.

Click here for the longlist Younger books we didn't choose... including a picture book biography of Malala, the Nobel Peace Prize winner (because we have her original memoir in our Mature category); the knowing sarcastic humor of Timmy Failure; two realistic fiction verse novels we really liked:  "Words with Wings" by Nikki Grimes, and "Little Dog Lost" by Marion Dane Bauer; a realistic fiction story of an Australian girl who goes to Pakistan with her parents to help flood victims (Kelsey and the Quest of the Porcelain Doll); a cute graphic novel about people who don't fit in (Odd Duck); a realistic novel about an Omani boy about to move to the States (The Turtle of Oman); a Singapore mystery/adventure novel in the vein of last year's Red Dot choice, Sherlock Sam (Danger Dan Confronts the Merlion Mastermind); a wordless book for older readers -- Aaron Beck's Journey; a light-hearted quest out of the UK: The Magnificent Moonhare; scary stories from James Preller (Home Sweet Horror); the trials and tribulations of a 7-year-old (Penguin Problems); and comedic kung fu chickens on a mission by Jennifer Gray.

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2014-2015 Older Readers

ISLN (Int'l School Library Network) Singapore's favorite books »

Our international spread is not bad:  3 USA books, 1 China (Mongolia) book, 2 UK books, and 2 Australian books. 

We have a graphic memoir (think: Smile) about a deaf girl who has to cope with hearing aids.  An adventurous trio of ghost-busters in London in the future (by the beloved Jonathan Stroud) (you have read the Bartimaeus sequence, haven't you?).  A realistic fiction dog story set in Mongolia (get the hankies ready).  Another realistic fiction story involving a dog, but this one told by a girl with Asperger's Syndrome, set in the US during a natural disaster, also with tear-provoking moments.  A mystery/disaster narrative post-cyclone in Australia.  A fairy-tale-like adventure across the rooftops of London to find a long-lost mother.  A suspend-reality experience where a grandfather shows up in middle-school thanks to science fiction.  And a historical fiction story -- almost a graphic novel because of the amount of visual material -- of a young man and his horse who sign up for World War One -- and end up in the horrors of the Middle East.

Click here for the longlist Older books we didn't choose... NB:  In this category there are a lot....  We had a hard time selecting just eight.  So please -- go out and read all the ones listed here that we didn't choose.  They are worth it...  including the Star-Wars-meet-Cinderella dystopia set in Beijing, first in a sequence; Other Brother by Simon French; the Unwanteds (which won in the Morning Calm Medal in Korea); the adventure of escaping from a library; the beautifully written and sensitive offering by Sonya Hartnett re WWII evacuees; "A Time to Dance" - a verse novel about an Indian girl who realizes she can dance even though she isn't whole (and several people have suggested "The Running Dream" as a perfect complement to it); a dystopia about British refugees struggling in France by Gillian Cross; a brilliant British gothic/horror fantasy set in the 19th century by Jonathan Auxier; a realistic novel set back in the 1980s in India where boys struggle to become tiffin carriers; a moving middle-school novel about a gifted and talented girl creating a family out of a group of misfits; Rick Yancey's latest adventure; Gordon Korman's latest offering -- re an ungifted boy who ends up with the smarties and helps them develop in a different way; a noble dystopia presented by Malorie Blackman; "She's Not Invisible" by Marcus Sedgwick -- such a strong contender -- with parallels to the beautiful Picture Me Gone; Jaclyn Moriarty's "A Corner of White" -- a parallel world fantasy; "Hero on a Bicycle" by the classic Shirley Hughes; "Liar and Spy" by Rebecca Stead -- too well known already by our students perhaps; Jared Diamond re-offering his "The Third Chimpanzee" in a young adult version;  Eoin Colfer launching a new series: The Reluctant Assasin; the Indian mythology equivalent of Rick Riordan's Greek/Roman ones - the Ash Mistry series; a time travel book set during natural disasters of fire and water in Australia -- "The Four Seasons of Lucy McKenzie"; and a book about Aussie soldiers and horses in WWI -- to complement Morpurgo's "War Horse" and Wolfer's "Light Horse Boy" -- "Loyal Creatures" by Morris Gleitzman.

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2014-2015 Mature Readers

ISLN (Int'l School Library Network) Singapore's favorite books »

Our international spread isn't bad: 3 USA, 1 Australian, 1 New Zealand, 1 India, 1 UK, 1 Pakistan.

We have the memoir of the youthful Nobel Peace Prize winner.  An unreliable narrator uncovering a mystery.  A historical novel set in Malaya during WWII and the region's post-war conflicts.  A novel within a novel -- giving us parallel worlds in more ways than one (and highlighting NaNoWriMo and the writing process).  A graphic rendition of the Ramayana from Sita's point of view.  An emotional (and visual) novel that examines cancer from the viewpoint of a teen whose mother is dying.  A post-apocalyptic survival novel set in Australia.  And an amusing and informative exploration of literary devices, all based on the nursery rhyme about three blind mice.

Click here for the longlist Mature books we didn't choose... including Meg Rosoff's Picture Me Gone - which everyone should read;  Sara Zarr's "The Lucy Variations" about the power of family and expectations, framed in the world of classical pianists; a graphic version of war set in Uganda's LRA; an Indian novel about a girl's world coming apart upon learning she is adopted; the Carnegie-awarding winning "Maggot Moon"; dragon slayers in Canada -- not to be missed; desperate, lonely lives in Iceland; historical fiction from Australia (which proved hard to source, hence it had to be eliminated -- but worth finding); "BZRK" by the author of the popular "Gone" series; if you don't know Brandon Sanderson, then start with his "Steelhearts" re a future ruled by super-humans; "I Kill the Mockingbird", a novel re 8th graders obsessed with making people obsessed with "To Kill a Mockingbird"; a novel about the endangered bonobos in the Congo; the multiple-award-winning "Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe"; and the sins of the brother achingly explored by Susin Nielsen, author of "Word Nerd".

We'll be shifting our shortlist selection announcement time to June 1, rather than November 1 -- as we always underestimate how long it takes, which means libraries are delayed in getting books on the shelves.  So with any luck we will make this a spring task, rather than an autumn one.