A Case for the Caldecott: Librarians Tell the Story

With the weight and hype being put into winning these “heavy medals” as referred to by School Library Journal Blog (Mroczek-Bayci, 2023) plus the rising conflicts centered around book banning across the nation, how are school librarians selecting these titles, specifically the Caldecott winners, when adding them to their library collections? Are librarians utilizing Book Industry and Standards and Communications (BISAC) codes to aid in their curation or are they following the masses and clicking the add to cart and purchasing button, or is there another means of decision making happening? This study was guided by a qualitative narrative methodological approach (Polkinghorne, 1995). The purpose of this study was twofold. First, I wanted to better understand how school librarians make curation decisions centered on books for their collection, specifically related to incorporating Caldecott Medal winning titles. Second, I wanted to determine how if librarians’ selection decisions were centered on elements of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy as defined by Ladson-Billings (1995, 2014), Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy as defined by Paris (2012) and Critical Librarianship (Drabinski, 2019).