Community Research

For my bookstore research, I chose to visit the Borders store in Friendship Heights. I thought it would be interesting to go to a chain store, one I frequently use myself, and review it with a critical eye. There is obviously a big different between a corporate-owned chain like Borders, and smaller local-owned book stores. From the second you enter Borders, you can tell that the aim is to make sales. The first things you see inside the store are shelves holding Bestsellers, the most popular books on the market. As you make your way back to the children's section, various toy displays lead you back to the books, showing more things you could buy along with your book purchase. The children's section is located in the back of the store. This is a smart choice because parents and children have to walk through tons of merchandise on the way back to the checkout, and will inevitably end up buying more. The children's section itself is not a particularly large one. It is organized by age group in some sections, by author in others. It was not easy to find books if you didn't know their exact age range or author's last name. The books displayed were all very generic, mostly featuring white children and families on their covers. None of the featured books dealt with any major issues. The spanish language section is very small, and the relgious book selection is larger than the science section. There seem to be as many toys as books, many of them featuring characters from popular children's books. I actively sought out "And Tango Makes Three" to see if Borders stocked it, and I did find one copy. Overall, the selection showed a major lack of books on diverse and controversial topics. It is important to remember that this is a generic chain bookstore, and their aim is to stock to popular books that will sell, so sad as it is, it makes sense that the more out there books wouldn't be present. 

I visited my library at home to do further research. During middle school and high school, I frequently used our public Library in Chapel Hill, and again, it was interesting to look at a frequent part of my life from a different view. After exploring the children's section of the library, I came to a few conclusions. The selection of books available was far more diverse than the selection at Borders, but the books were in general much less recent. While the library had a lot of books that dealt with race, cultural differences, and different kinds of families, the majority of these books were written at least 10 to 15 years ago, and many were simply out of date and made broad cultural statements edging on stereotypes. I'm not sure whether some of these books were helpful or hurtful. The lack of current books was a big problem. Obviously public libraries simply do not have the funding to stock to most recent titles, but there does need to be a solution to this problem, because portrayals of diversity in some of the stocked books are just not helpful for impressionable kids.

Websites:

http://www.childrenslit.com/

-This website functions as a database for children's literature. The website aims to provide reliable and current information about all literature available to children and it's benefits for use in the classroom/home.

http://www.multiculturalchildrenslit.com/

-This site aims to offer children's literature titles that can help to teach cultural diversity and foster a love of different cultures in young children.

http://www.carolhurst.com/

-This site offers lists of books that can be used in the classroom and reviews their benefits, and divides them into different categories based on age group and content.

http://www.childrensliteraturenetwork.org/index.php

-This website offers the most current information about literature being published for teens, young adults, and young children.

During all of our discussions about children's literature in the media, I have always thought of a musical called "Into the Woods." This show follows the stories of many different fairy tale characters, and blends them all together to create the show. These characters include Cinderella and her stepsisters, Little Red Riding Hood, the Wolf, Rapunzel, Jack (of Jack and the Beanstalk) and his Giant, among others. Though this show features all of these characters, it is in no way a children's show. The show deals with serious themes and doesn't depict happy endings for the majority of the characters. Through what I have learned in this class, this musical has become more and more interesting to me, as it has a strong moral message, but depicts some scary subject matter along the way. In the end, the musical pushes the idea to be careful what you do, because "children will listen" and follow your example.

Here is a link to a medley performance of some of the songs  from the show: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KsFx5835Qrg