Silver Spring Library

Silver Spring Public Library

Last week I went to Silver Spring library and all the way there I tried to prepare myself for the lack of diverse materials. Remember the shock and awe I was in after Borders…
Maybe I keep waiting for an entire selection of culturally rich books. I saw a few, but many. What I did find rather interesting was the amount of religious books available. There were books covering Ramadan as well as both upcoming Jewish holidays. These books were available to all levels of readers. Admittedly, I had already judged some of the picture books that looked outdated and assumed (I hate that word) they would have stereotypical images. I didn’t find anything that jumped right out at me, but I was left with two questions: In a book describing family traditions, especially religious family, would I expect to see a person of a different race or religious faith? Is the book misleading if the characters aren’t diversified? Am I jaded because I was not disappointed? I was really impressed with and saddened at the same time by a book discussing what is was like to be Muslim. The illustrations were real photographs, none of which were stereotypical, and the story explains Islamic traditions in kid friendly language. The part that saddened me was the comparisons to Christianity and Americanism. Does another culture need to have commonalities to main stream America to be seen as acceptable and non-threatening? YUCK.