Resources for Global Literature
Media
Resources
- List of Contemporary Titles (focus is on some historically marginalized cultures)
- A Guide to Selecting Multicultural Literature (Boston University) - This guide to selecting multicultural literature is intended to encourage broader use of this literature by offering guidelines for selecting titles. Guidelines are unfortunately still necessary, because culturally biased books continue to be published and even to receive awards.
- Global Read Aloud - One Book to Connect the World: the GRA has grown to make a truly global connection with more than 1,000,000 students having participated.
- Around the World in 80+ Children's Books - Even if your pilgrimage to a dream destination is entirely imaginary, these stories can offer an introduction to a wonderful world of armchair travel.
- The World Through Picture Books (IFLA) - Librarian's favorite books from their country.
- Global Literature - Primary Source - Resources and Curriculum Guides
- Cooperative Children's Book Center - Selected literature for children and teens set in other countries.
- Global Read Aloud: One Book to Connect the World - a global reading project that has connected more than 500,000 students on 6 continents since its inception in September 2010.
- The Man Booker Prizes - Any novel originally written in English and published in the UK in the year of the prize, regardless of the nationality of their author. The novel must be an original work in English (not a translation) and must not be self-published.
- Global Literature Online Book Group (Global Studies Outreach at Harvard) - (for educators) The focus of the book group is crossing borders in time and place. It allows participants to discuss contemporary fiction that uses memory and travel to explore individual and social change. Site contains alignment with Common Core Standards.
- International Digital Children's Library - A Library for the World's Children - Free online access to high-quality digital books from around the world. Browse by age, grade genre, book length, and character types.
- Notable Books for a Global Society - The Notable Books for a Global Society (NBGS) list was developed to help students, teachers, and families identify books that promote understanding of and appreciation for the world's full range of diverse cultures and ethnic and racial groups.
- Book Dragon: Books for the multi-cultural reader (Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center) - BookDragon is a new media initiative of the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center (APAC), and serves as a forum for those interested in learning more about the Asian Pacific American experience through literature.
- Words without Borders - Words without Borders promotes cultural understanding through the translation, publication, and promotion of the finest contemporary international literature. Open doors for readers of English around the world to the multiplicity of viewpoints, richness of experience, and literary perspective on world events offered by writers in other languages. Every month eight to twelve new works by international writers are published and translated.
- Fiction from Around the World - City Lights Booksellers and Publishers - a good resource for new fiction from around the world.
- Africa Access: Expanding Perspectives on Africa, Book by Book - Founded in 1989 to help schools, public libraries, and parents improve the quality of their K-12 collections on Africa.
- World Stories - World Stories is a growing collection of short stories including retold traditional tales and new short stories from around the world. The stories feature the languages most spoken by UK children as currently one in seven children in the UK speaks a language other than English as their first language. The stories can be read and listened to online, or downloaded for free.
- A Year of Reading the World - I read my way around all the globe’s 196 independent countries – plus one extra territory chosen by blog visitors – sampling one book from every nation.
Media
- Journey in Films -Journeys in Film believes that helping America’s youth develop a worldview with global understanding should be a primary 21st century educational goal.
- Global Voices - Global Voices offers intimate stories about everyday people. From India to Ethiopia, El Salvador to Iraq, Global Voices offers rare insights and firsthand perspectives from communities and individuals around the world.
- The Danger of a Single Story - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - Novelist Chimamanda Adichie tells the story of how she found her authentic cultural voice -- and warns that if we hear only a single story about another person or country, we risk a critical misunderstanding.
Resources
- Reading Interest Survey
- Using Children's Literature with ESL - New Foundland Labrador Canada
- Hadaway, Nancy L., and Marian J. McKenna. Breaking Boundaries with Global Literature: Celebrating Diversity in K-12 Classrooms. Newark, DE: International Reading Association, 2007. Print.