We love to hear happy library stories!

And – on a different note – we love to FUND happy library stories! Members can apply for up to $1000 in a special limited-time grant opportunity, through May, 2021.

Apply today! Next grant consideration will be late February, so make this happen! Spoiler Alert: applications to build diverse collections in your library are pretty darn likely to be happily received by our committee!

Check out this article excerpt, and you can read the entire thing here!

“Once upon a time, there was a girl named Sofia who loved books but was bothered by how the book collection in her school library was very … well … white.

So the girl decided she’d try to write a new twist to the tale by penning something prosaic yet powerful — an application for a government grant, to be exact.

Two thousand dollars later, 13-year-old Sofia Rathjen of Sherwood Park, Alta., is curating a collection of books by, and about, Black, Indigenous and people of colour.

The new books are building diversity on the bookshelves of the Sherwood Heights junior high library and more tolerance and understanding among its students.

“Students of colour — and all people of colour —  can see their stories represented authentically and unapologetically and written by authors who understand those experiences,” the Latino-Canadian teen told CBC Radio’s Edmonton AM.

“And non-people of colour can understand things that we go through. That way, it’s not always our job to explain everything and why something is hurtful or racist.” 

In total, the school will get 134 books —  science fiction, poetry, history, graphic novels, mythology and more — featuring authors from dozens of cultural backgrounds.

Rathjen’s application for Strathcona County’s Community Change grant grew out of another piece of writing — a “passion project” essay about why representation matters in school libraries that she had done the year before.

“The library was great, [but] I noticed that it lacked representation of people of colour and I saw the way that it affected outside of the library and outside of books,” Rathjen said.

“Personally, I experienced a lot of micro-aggressions, and I know people who have experienced blatant racism from people at our school. And so I just thought about how I could change that.””

Read the rest of this good story right here!