Library For All’s culturally diverse, age appropriate and professionally curated collections are available in digital and print formats to support education programming and reading for pleasure. Select books to suit your reading community’s needs or interests, or let our team prepare a list of titles to match your requirements.
By Evelyn Bartelme and Jodie Lea Martire
Gender & Inclusion
Library For All’s books offer contemporary, diverse reading opportunities to meet the informational, recreational and cultural needs of children. We want all children to learn to read, so they can read to learn.
Library For All books follow a simplified 7 step levelling system. This reading runway helps teachers, parents and carers support and monitor their child’s reading journey, while children can easily select books to suit their needs.
Our strategically balanced libraries include a wide range of topics covering fiction and non fiction titles. From culturally diverse adventure narratives to factual books providing crucial knowledge about the environment, we want every child to find a book that captures their imagination.
Library For All’s books are divided into four broad content pillars: Science and the Environment, Cultures and Communities, Health and Hygiene, and Sports, Arts and Recreation. We monitor library development to ensure a balance of these thematic areas, ensuring every reader can find books to meet their needs and interests.
Library For All is committed to positive representations of gender across our libraries. This includes showcasing both men and women in non-traditional domestic and professional roles. Over 50% of our stories represent women and girls in lead roles, or within gender-diverse storylines.
We work to ensure positive representation of people with disabilities throughout our libraries, including books about living with a disability, as well as generally diverse and inclusive stories. As disability may look very different in different cultural spaces, we work closely with cultural advisors on appropriate representation.
We know that children learn best when they can select from a range of ‘mirror’ books, which reflect their lived experience, and ‘window’ books, which offer glimpses into other cultures, places and imaginary worlds.
But being able to see yourself in a story is particularly important for young readers, with positive impacts on literacy and social and emotional development. That’s why Library For All aims for 70% mirrors in our culturally specific libraries.
Our books are created by experienced and emerging authors and illustrators, who participate in a range of paid and voluntary writing opportunities.
We work with educators and development organisations to run Writers’ Workshops around the world, ensuring our content is always relevant to reading communities.
We supplement local content with commissioned expert content to guarantee a balanced library of levels and themes, enhancing children’s interest in reading and learning.
“Children have the right to read texts that mirror their experiences and languages, provide windows into the lives of others, and open doors into our diverse world.”
Library For All books are freely available on our app. Print editions are available in a practical A5 format, using high quality paper with durable binding that stands up to frequent handling and adverse weather conditions.
Selected Library For All titles are available in a large, full colour A3 format, perfect for shared reading with a class.
Selected Library For All titles are available as A5 story compendiums, or ‘magazines’. These are printed on lightweight paper for wide distribution in cases where affordable and less long-lasting products may be required.
Books alone won’t solve illiteracy.
But literacy without books is impossible.
