Applying a Critical Lens on I Read Canadian Day

I believe the world needs more Canada.
~Bono


This year schools, school libraries, public libraries, families and more celebrated the first ever I Read Canadian Day on February 19th, 2020.

It was a fun and exciting event that will only grow with each year's planning and programming. I really enjoyed curating the books from all sections within our library learning commons in anticipation of the day. 

It also helped bring to light same gaps within our collection. As with everything we do in the library learning commons, we need to look at the collection with an eye to how the books reflect the community and provide an opportunity for readers to see themselves in the books they read. It's also important to include examples of Own Voices. This is a good article with a description of Own Voices if you are unfamiliar. 

As I was curating our collection, I really struggled to find books written by Black Canadian authors. While there as been a concentrated effort to increase our collection of books with Black main characters and books written by Black authors until the onset of I Read Canadian Day I hadn't intentionally looked to see if Black Canadian authors were represented in our collection. 

This led me to think that I also need to take the time to see what other cultures within Canada may not be represented by Canadian authors in our collection. Again, this is an area where we have worked to increase the collection overall but without an eye to Canadian authors specifically.

If I Read Canadian Day has done nothing else, it has given me another lens to which I can use to critically evaluate the collection within our school library. 

I ordered 300 maple leaf stickers to add to the cover/spine of books in our collection in anticipation of I Read Canadian Day and was surprised as I began to pull books from the collection how many there were and that I ran out of stickers.

As I was pulling books to add the maple leaf stickers another opportunity to think critically about the collection, specifically the movement to decolonize the library.
I wondered whether I should put a maple leaf on any of the books
 we have in the collection by an Indigenous author? 
Was I creating a situation that would cause harm to 
authors who do not identify as Canadian? 

I read this article by Tanya Talaga today and my worries continued to grow. 

I ended up putting maple leaf stickers on the books by Indigenous authors because I wanted them to be easily found and noticed by students and educators as they came to choose their books for I Read Canadian Day. 

I hope I haven't caused harm but if I have I will work to undo that harm and learn from it. 
I will work to find another way to highlight these authors in a 
way that is respectful and honours their voices.
But for this first I Read Canadian Day it was all new territory and 
I didn't want them to be shut out, forgotten or ignored. 

Do the best you can until you know better
Then when you know betterdo better.” —Maya Angelou

All I can hope for is that I did the best I can for this first I Read Canadian Day and that by the time next year comes around I will know more, our collection with have grown and I can continue to share a love of Canadian literature with our school community. 

1 comment

  1. Amazing post, Beth. I found that I was really missing those stickers at my public library as I was looking for books in the week before I Read Canadian day. Thanks ms for encouraging us to really think about the collections we interact with.

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