Our Project

The story of the Golden Library goes back to the summer of 2022 (before my Freshman year of high school.) The Librarian at Brickton Montessori school, where I spent my sixth to eighth grade years, had asked for my help organizing the library. My job was organizing books into different holiday themes, which gave me the idea for my Gold Award. Brickton had two very full bins of Christmas books, one of Hanukkah books, three Diwali books, and one Kwanzaa book.  Noticing the imbalance, especially in a school as diverse as Brickton, the idea ofa library of diverse books was born. I wanted more books that highlighted different celebrations, cultures, and communities.

By the next summer (2023), the project was in motion. During the brainstorming process the project grew into a visibility project. The goal of the project became making sure that every student at Brickton had a book they could see themselves in. Also important was exposing them to those different from them, because if ideas such as homophobia and racism can be taught to children so can acceptance. For that reason I made the decision that the books in the library
would all be picture books, as recently there have been studies proving that picture books stay impactful long after they are traditionally discarded.

I organized the library by different themes, each month bringing a new set of ten picture books which pertained to a different social issue and came with a sheet explaining it and some questions to make the students think. The themes are Cultural Awareness, Neurodiversity, Indigenous Peoples and Systemic Oppression, Multicultural Celebrations, Mental Health, LGBTQ+ and Non-traditional Families, Black History, Women’s History, and Disability.