BOOKS THAT REFLECT THEMSELVES AND THE WORLD Recent research indicates that effective home libraries cultivate appreciation for diversity and empathy, allowing students to better understand not only the people and world around them, but also themselves (Cleaver, 2020). Books in a home library should reflect students’ personal experiences and culture while positively depicting the rich tapestry of cultural and ethnic groups around them (Worthy & Roser, 2010). Books are sometimes windows, offering views of worlds that may be real or imagined, familiar or strange. These windows are also sliding glass doors, and readers have only to walk through in imagination to become part of whatever world has been created and recreated by the author. When lighting conditions are just right, however, a window can also be a mirror. Literature transforms human experience and reflects it back to us, and in that reflection we can see our own lives and experiences as part of the larger human experience. Reading, then, becomes a means of self-affirmation, and readers often seek their mirrors in books (Bishop 1990, p .ix). Every educator understands this intuitively, having seen students transfixed by mirrors and opening and walking through sliding glass doors. When children find themselves in the books they read, the experience feels magical. All children require windows and sliding glass doors to thrive—and home libraries are an essential component of this. Children from dominant cultural and social groups have no trouble finding mirrors in texts. But if they are always staring into the mirror, they become transfixed, unable to find empathy or understanding for those who are not like them. They require windows onto the world beyond their small piece of it, and sliding glass doors to walk through in order to see themselves as part of an enormous whole. The reverse is also true. As Bishop (1990) writes in her landmark text, Mirrors, Windows, and Sliding Glass Doors: “When children cannot find themselves reflected in the books they read, or when the images they see are distorted, negative, or laughable, they learn a powerful lesson about how they are devalued in the society of which they are a part” (p. 557). HOW MANY BOOKS? While the precise number of books needed to produce the optimal impact on children’s growth is not clear, one thing is certain: when a child begins their home library journey with few books in their home, even one book can make a difference in their reading lives .
HOME LIBRARIES TOPIC PAPER 14
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