The Privilege of Serving on Heavy Medal

I've got a guest post over on Heavy Medal today. The post started germinating for me when Nina Lindsay and I chatted about representation (or its lack thereof), and its effects, on award selection committees last winter as part of her SLJ piece on the 2015 youth media awards.

My post today is on the privilege of serving, and what I feel those with that privilege have a responsibility to do: to recognize their privilege in whatever form(s) it takes, and to challenge themselves to read and discuss outside the confines of their particular experience in a deep manner that is as cognizant as possible of the existence of bias.

Again, it's linked here: "The Privilege of Serving" on Heavy Medal.

And, if you have found yourself here on The Show Me Librarian after following a link from the Heavy Medal post, and have any interest in my previous writing on this topic of privilege and youth librarianship, I've got two additional posts for you:

• "Selection is Privilege" (which came out of some privileged discussions about those same 2015 youth media awards)
• "Problematic Trust: Why We Can't Just 'Trust Child Readers'" (take on the recent discussions of The Hired Girl)

Thank you, also, to Nina and Jonathan at Heavy Medal for having me to guest post.