At San Diego Conference, American Librarians Share Best Ways to Engage Young Readers

This year’s international conference of the American Library Association, held June 27 to July 2 in San Diego, offered the more than 13,500 attendees opportunities to network, learn about new approaches to enhance literacy, understand the threats to libraries and library staff and how to counter book challenges.

Hundreds of sessions were offered, including: “How to Run an LGBTQ+ Book Club for Teens,” “Let’s Talk About Sex – Gender & Sexuality Education,” Protecting the Right to Read in Challenging Times,” “The Power of Children’s Poetry in the Classroom,” “Supporting Transgender Students” and “Collecting Chinese Jewish Stories for Your Library.”

From toddlers to young adults, many sessions addressed how to engage new or reluctant readers with resources, support and expert advice for librarians, parents and educators.

The session “Sing, Talk, Read” focused on ways to activate the brain, body and senses of young minds. With research indicating that reading aloud is an important part of early childhood brain development, a variety of techniques have been shown to benefit preschool-age children during storytime.

Early childhood educator and musician Dr. Rekha Rajan demonstrated how music and literacy are intimately connected.

Keeping a beat by clapping, tapping toes, or beating on tables, chairs or other structures, she said, is one of the most basic and important ways to engage young children.

“Everything can be a drum,” she said.

She also encouraged dance and movement to music, pointing out how animals move in nature.

Jessica Ralli of the Brooklyn Public Library suggested using open-ended questions as ways to start conversations with young children, such as: “What do you notice about …?”

Maps and scavengers hunts, said nonfiction children’s books author Gabrielle Balkan, are fun ways to excite young ones.

“Nonfiction is ripe for questioning,” she said.

Balkan, author of What a Map Can Do, also extolled the virtues of movement for the very young, saying movement improves concentration, relieves stress and increases retention.

Children from kindergarten on are typically asked to sit still in the classroom, but that’s not always best. Even just pointing, counting by stomping feet or taking breaks to stretch and move, can help, she said.

Balkan showed an image in her presentation that included a quote by Henry David Thoreau: “The moment my legs begin to move, my thoughts begin to flow.”

Joshua David Stein, author of the book Solitary Animals, wrote his story for his son who at the time had trouble making friends. Subtitled “Introverts of the Wild,” Stein’s book illustrated through colorful art that solitary animals like panthers, sloths and eagles can be “alone … happy.”

Dan Saks, music therapist, performer, author, educator and musician, demonstrated the power of echo songs by asking the audience to repeat each line after he sang it.

He said when children feel part of the music, as with echo songs, it’s empowering. They become not just receptive but involved and engaged in the power of music and words.

San Diego-based nonprofit Guitars and Ukes in the Classroom (GITC) trains early childhood educators from all areas of San Diego County to play, sing, lead and integrate music with academic learning and social and emotional development.

“Our developmental approach,” said GITC founder and executive director Jess Baron, “prepares and equips teachers to introduce music to children as young as 2 to hear and match a steady beat, adding movement, chanting, singing, and finally, strumming ukulele.”

Rhythm underlies everything, she said, extolling the power of song and the joy of music.

“The beat and melody give young children a predictable musical scaffold upon which they can express their big ideas in beautiful, bold, funny, creative language they never forget,” said Baron. “It all begins with the steady beat.”

“I’m excited that the connection between music and literacy is being recognized,” she added.

Graphic Novels for Teens

Moving from the youngest learners to young adult readers, the session titled “Finding Yourself Within the Pages — Young Adult Graphic Novels” offered evidence that graphic novels over prose books can help reluctant readers gain literacy skills.

Topics covered included anxiety, bullying, gender, sexuality, authenticity, career choices, social groups, family dynamics, disabilities, divorce and coming-of-age themes.

In Jeremy Whitley’s book Navigating With You, the main characters, one of whom is disabled, have to cope with divorced parents, moving to a new town and adjusting to their uprooted lives.

Graphic novels, Whitley said, are best for reluctant readers who have to integrate the words with the pictures to gain understanding of the story. In doing so, they are able to visualize themselves, or their friends or classmates, in the story more readily than a prose book.

They can see in the books a reflection of their lives and the lives of others, he said.

Author Richard Ashley Hamilton said he started writing young adult works using universal ideas that ended up appealing to no one, and found that being more specific, ironically, has more widespread appeal and can be more relatable.

He said there’s an immediacy to graphic books that works to engage readers.

Hamilton’s book titled Scoop, Volume 1 centers on an intern at a news station who works to free her father from charges she believes are false.

His book Tectiv is set in a post-apocalyptic world where there is no crime — until there is. The main character is a girl who becomes a detective.

Books for teens and young adults, both authors said, are inspired by real-life experiences, although Whitley alluded to high school as a basis for real-life traumas that can be understood by nearly anyone.

Book Challenges

When asked about the challenges to graphic novels, such as Maus, Gender Queer, Fun Home and Persepolis, all of which are based on the authors’ personal experiences, both panelists strongly objected to the efforts to ban these books.

“It’s ridiculous to challenge Gender Queer,” said Whitley, who added that it’s never a negative for young adults to read about real-life experiences that can help their own development and increase understanding of others.

Most of the book challenges center around LGBTQ issues and characters, as in Gender Queer and Fun Home.

About sex in graphic novels, Whitley said high school kids are quite familiar with sex, and Hamilton said they can see far worse on their phones.

Hamilton particularly objected to efforts to ban Maus, saying it’s history.

Maus tells the story of the Holocaust, with Jews as mice and Nazis as cats. One illustration that’s been cited by conservatives as a reason to ban the book from school libraries is of a nude woman. But the illustration is of a cartoon mouse.

In a recent column in the Washington Post by Greg Sargent, “The Bonfire Beckons,” Maus creator Art Spiegelman said, of the trend in conservative states and counties to restrict access and ban books like his, “It’s a real warning sign of a country that’s yearning for a return to authoritarianism.”

Sargent wrote that Spiegelman said the graphic form of Maus can reach a wider audience andis about de-humanizing other people, which is precisely what teens and young adults should be able to access.

He said Maus is being targeted on specious grounds, as are other books that share stories about sensitive topics such as gay and trans experiences and racism and discrimination of all kinds.

What graphic novels can do is make diverse stories more real and more accessible for young readers and opens doors for discussions of difficult topics.

The only upside to the trend to ban these books is that they gain popularity each time attempts are made to control access. But that seems to matter little to those who continue to favor controlling the public’s right to read.

Commented Misty Jones, San Diego Public Library Director, “As book challenges rise across the country, the San Diego Public Library is committed to fighting against book bans and censorship and affirming the freedom to read and learn.

“People deserve to be able to visit a library and find a book that reflects their identities and experiences. We are paying close attention to what is happening in libraries in other areas and will continue to advocate for everyone’s right to read what they want to read.”

Opinion columnist and education writer Marsha Sutton can be reached at suttonmarsha@gmail.com.