Resources for Specific Youth Populations
28 March 2025
Students will broadly discuss annotated sources and resources on diversity, multiculturalism, and cultural competency in YA literature.
For your post, find a resource that is current AND provides information, resources, education, and/or professional development on diversity, multiculturalism, and cultural competency in YA literature.
Discussion should include, but is not limited to:
• Your review of the resource (including links to the resource),
• Your assessment of the audience for the resource,
• Complications or barriers, and
• Questions you have about the resource.
There isn't a single resource out there that can comprehensively cover all the cultural competencies a youth librarian would need, but there are definitely some that are reaching for some aspect of it pretty hard. The most high-achieving examples are likely pathfinders, bibliographies compiling useful resources when one is just getting into a specific topic, as I'm sure we've all relied upon and attempted to capture in past coursework. Naturally, my selection will add to the pile that this discussion is liable to become: the Children's and Young Adult Literature guide from the University of Nevada Las Vegas (2025).
Though this is for a class specifically devoted to young adult literature, the structure and resources afforded to youth services at public libraries—specifically the lack thereof for teen services at some public libraries—means it's still important for a teen librarian to have know their way around books for younger patrons. This LibGuide, maintained by Amanda Melili, head of the Teacher Development & Resources Library at UNLV University Libraries, covers all the bases a youth librarian needs to know for finding quality materials for their community, whether they work in a school or public library.
And when I say all the bases, it very much seems like all of them. Complete lists of winning and honors books from long-running and diverse awards across the education and library industries? Nearly 30 of them, in fact; each with its own devoted page, sorted by year in a tab display to make for easy looking through. Topical booklists like Best STEM Books or Rise, A Feminist Book Project? The exact same treatment for all fifteen. All the other identities and mediums included are given the same exhaustive compilations as the others. Graphic novels, queer books, indigenous literature, hi-lo (high interest, low readability) books? Yep, each complete with subpages for individual age groups, plus some extra research guides for the former two. Spanish-language materials? Same deal, with a page of bilingual textbooks included for good measure. Even manga, a rich tradition in its own right, yet unable to truly escape the "no redeeming value" specter as its western contemporaries, has a page divided up into 15 different genres, all included titles still in publication at the time of writing. Just looking through all the pages and thinking about the hours and keyboard gestures it took to implement everything in the LibGuide editor is enough to evoke phantom cramps in my own hands.
That enough qualifies this pathfinder as a quality resource, yet there are other resources included as well. In the event that a book fitting someone's specifications isn't included on this list, there are tutorial videos on how to search the databases NoveList and
TeachingBooks. If one prefers to find books from more personable sources or is looking for specialized commentary on what's new in a given genre or with appeal to a certain identity, there are links to organizations like the Cooperative Children's Books Center or the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, and long-running websites like No Flying, No Tights, I'm Your Neighbor, and more.
As much as I can applaud the effort put into this pathfinder, there are some shortcomings to keep in mind while using it. Most obviously, this is a pathfinder hosted at a university thousands of miles away—clicking a link for a specific book takes you straight to UNLV's catalog, meaning one has to make certain a book is included in their institution's catalog before they suggest it to someone. Any included textbooks aren't guaranteed to align with Virginia state standards, either. And the increasingly transient nature of the internet at large means any extra resource is susceptible to link rot: some of the how-to videos for NoveList have been set to private, and a link to the site Latinxs in Kid Lit directs to one that its owners have allowed to lapse, leaving it to be taken over by SEO advertising slop.
It leaves me wondering how frequently Melili goes through each link to make certain it directs to a site that's relatively current, or to anything at all, despite the last update of the pathfinder dated to the day I post this. It's understandably difficult to sift through the morass of the internet to find something that might replace a resource that's no longer available; though another option to consider would be including archival links to these lost sites through the Internet Archive or another service. Still, this LibGuide remains stellar for finding youth books for every age or identity despite what gaps it might have...assuming they don't all manage to afflict one more than others, anyway.
References
Melili, A. (2025, March 28). Children's and young adult literature [Pathfinder]. LibGuides at University of Las Vegas, Nevada. https://guides.library.unlv.edu/c.php?g=403811&p=2748521