Reading To Understand Our Students

I love to read.  Imagine that, a librarian that loves to read!  Books let me escape.  They transport me through time.  Through the author's words I can experience history as if I were there or be taken to a world that doesn't exist.  I meet new people (characters) and am given a glimpse into their lives.  If the author knows their craft well enough, they make me feel true emotions for the characters they created.  Those books make me laugh and cry. 

It was during the Scholastic Reading Summit that I attended a session led by Pernille Ripp where she talked about diversity in books.  She spoke of how students have a hard time relating to books when they don't see characters like themselves.  That hit me like a ton of bricks.  I know my own reading dealt with characters that were like me, but what about the books in our school library.  Had I done a good job of adding books to our collection that represented our school's population?  In short, no.

Not only had I not done a good job of providing enough books books that matched our student population, I wasn't reading them myself so I could help students find those books.  That became my goal - to make sure we added titles that would be relevant to various student groups and to read them so I could recommend them to students. 

Here are a few of my latest reads that I highly recommend:
Ghost by Jason Reynolds
Patina by Jason Reynolds
Paper Things by Jennifer Richard Jacobson
Piecing Me Together by Renėe Watson
Refugee by Alan Gratz
Ashes to Asheville by Sarah Dooley

If you have other titles that are a must in creating a diverse middle school collection, I'd love to hear from you!