NEW: RIF’s Race, Equity, and Inclusion Center

RIF is excited to share about its newest online resource center. Our own Erin Bailey, RIF’s Director of Content, shares about this exciting new set of resources that we hope families, educators and students will find useful and impactful! Read more and then start exploring the center today: RIF.ORG/REI

At RIF we believe in bringing awareness to current issues in children’s literacy. Our core mission for 56 years has always been focused on addressing challenges of access and equity through creating high-quality programs. Therefore, based on the ongoing racial injustices in our country and their effect on education, we are proud to introduce our Race, Equity, and Inclusion Center. The goal of this center is to provide a broad range of resources and tools to empower educators and families to leverage diverse books as part of the conversation and solution to creating informed, compassionate young readers.We know that children thrive when they are given opportunities to see themselves represented in the books they read and when they have opportunities to explore differences. The center is designed to help educators and families do three things:

• Assess the diversity in their current book collections,
• Identify diverse books to add, and
• Support children as they develop positive social identities and build literacy skills.

The Choose Books section has resources that will help you audit your book collection and consider titles you already have, identify gaps, and find opportunities to add new books that are written about or by Black, Indigenous, and People of Color. We would especially like to highlight the Diverse BookFinder Content Analysis Tool.

The Use Books section offers resources and practical ways to incorporate diverse literature into your daily lives. We also included resources that provide ideas for how to start and continue conversations with children about race, equity, and inclusion.

In our Booklists and Posts section you will find RIF-curated booklists by grade band, Diverse BookFinder topic, heritage month collections, RIF Staff Favorites, and more! Though the lists are not exhaustive, booklists were one of the most requested resources during our October 2021 webinars “Diversity Your Bookshelf” and “Diverse Books in Practice,” so we are thrilled to deliver this resource which we plan to continually update.

While we acknowledge that the creation of this center is just one additional step on a long path towards creating equitable opportunities for literacy education, we are hoping you will find it helpful and honored that you have chosen to join us on this journey.