Librarians Help Kids Cope, Understand

Following the September 11 terrorist attacks, librarians who work with young people have been trying to respond to the shifting needs of students, parents, and teachers. According to some, the immediate aftermath of the disaster brought a desire not so much for information as for comfort and inspiration—books, videos, storytimes, and music with what one patron, a parent, described as a "good, cozy feel." Now that the initial shock has worn off and the country may be facing a prolonged war, librarians are searching for resources to help young people understand and cope with the complex issues swirling around them.

In Fayetteville, AR, media specialist Cassandra Barnett says she's been trying to recall reviews she read previously of books about Arab culture. "That's an area of our collection that we're definitely going to need to beef up," says Barnett, the librarian at Fayetteville High School. Recently, she worked with a teacher whose class had just finished reading The Iliad . "They're looking at a lot of essential questions on the idea of being heroic," says Barnett, "but also at how one group can look at [an action] as bringing glory and another can look at the exact same thing as being horrible."

Other librarians have found themselves pulling resources for teachers on the history of the American flag and the Pledge of Allegiance, or helping children find ways to aid those affected by the tragedy. In suburban Long Island, NY, where many firefighters killed at the World Trade Center lived, librarians say that in the first few weeks after the tragedy, they were focused simply on helping the community through its grief. "We're just beginning to come out of it," librarian Patricia Yosca of Lynbrook North Middle School said last month. "For three weeks, we were kind of going through the paces of doing everything we were supposed to be doing but without a lot of joy."

Now Yosca and others say they're focused on helping kids understand the crisis and on combating any racial bias that might erupt. Yosca, for instance, has used the time at the end of class periods to read Baseball Saved Us (Lee & Low, 1993) by Ken Mochizuki, a book about the incarceration of Japanese-Americans during World War II (see "Acclaimed Film Tells Librarian's Heroic Tale "). In New York City, the Office of School Library Services quickly created lesson plans and booklists titled "Dealing With Prejudice, Stereotyping, and Scapegoating in the Aftermath of the September 11, 2001 Tragedy."

Librarians also want to provide students with good fiction and nonfiction about Muslims and Arab-Americans. But several say they're disappointed in the relatively small amount of good materials for young people on those subjects. Librarian Edith Ching at Washington, D.C.'s Cathedral School says she checked one well-known series on the nations of the world and found that the information on Afghanistan dated from 1996—before the Taliban came to power. "There's not a whole lot on Muslim children," she adds, "or even about explaining faiths."

There's definitely a dearth of good English-language materials, particularly fiction, on Muslims and Arab-Americans, confirms Hazel Rochman, an expert on multicultural literature for children and an editor at Booklist. Like others, Rochman cites the works of Naomi Shihab Nye, the well-known poet and children's writer, as examples of the kind of literature that's most needed. "We need books that humanize, not that preach, [books] that just tell you about people as individuals and that make you see connections with people who look very different." For instance, Nye's book Sitti's Secrets (Four Winds, 1994) tells the story of a young American girl enchanted by a visit to her warm Palestinian grandmother. Another frequently cited children's book dealing with Muslims is The Day of Ahmed's Secret (Lothrop, 1990) by Florence Parry Heide and Judith Heide Gilliland.

Holiday House recently published a nonfiction book called Celebrating Ramadan by Diane Hoyt-Goldsmith, about a young American boy celebrating the Muslim holy month. SLJ's reviewer said, "The boy's Islamic school, his mosque, his extended family, and the centrality of Islam in his life are conveyed in warm, full-color photographs and sympathetic text" (August, p. 169). Mary Cash, who edited Celebrating Ramadan, said she realized in working on the book how much basic information about Islam needed to be explained to an American audience. It's possible that because of that lack of familiarity, many American "authors and illustrators don't feel qualified to approach the topic," says Cash.

Lynn Miller-Lachman, the editor of MultiCultural Review, thinks that in the past, American publishers may have worried that books on Arab-Americans and Muslims would sell poorly. She noted that The Breadwinner (Groundwood, 2001), a recent book by Deborah Ellis about a young girl in Afghanistan, was published by a Canadian, not American, company. Still, Miller-Lachman thinks American publishers will soon respond to what she sees as a growing demand. "I think there's going to be a feeling that we need to know about [the Muslim world], that we can't remain in isolation and ignorance."