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Decloaking Wakanda: Creating Space for BIPOC Nerds

On February 9, 2023, at the fourth Joint Conference of Librarians of Color (JCLC), I had the exhilarating experience of guiding a discussion that focused on the need to connect with nerd culture and create a welcoming environment for the BIPOC fandom. The soul of this session had been several years in the making and built on countless heart-to-heart moments. So, I couldn’t imagine a better venue for seeing it actualized than my first JCLC. Furthermore, for this session, I had the honor of being in conversation with fellow nerds and comics librarians Jean Darnell and Deimosa Webber-Bey . To my eternal amazement, our talk was met with a standing room only reception, and afterward we were repeatedly regaled with tales of being turned away at the door. In hopes of capturing a small portion of that day's magic, this post grew out of that discussion. *** For the past 30 years, BIPOC nerds have existed in the cringe-worthy shadow of Urkel. What if, instead, they’d had portrayals such as
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BIMM, DIMM, and PIT - Oh My!

Sara Pavone and Christina Taylor, the RRHS librarians, used a combination of different technologies to introduce the logistics of digital copyright protection to students in BIMM, DIMM, and PIT. This lesson marked the maiden voyage of the iPads that the library received as part of the Next Generation Digital Classroom (NGDC) initiative. Mrs. Pavone and Mrs. Taylor combined the tablets with Blendspace , Google Drive , and WeVideo to provide a lesson that not only engaged the students but also allowed teachers to differentiate the instruction to meet students’ needs. Finally, because the entire lesson was platform agnostic, using online tools, students were able to work at their own pace...beyond the confines of the physical classroom...from anywhere they had Internet access. Many students commented that they enjoyed the lesson and thought it was a lot better than last year’s, which was not nearly as interactive nor heavy in technology. **This post was originally published on the  Round
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Where the Sidewalk Ends

Although published in crisp black and white, former  Playboy  correspondent Silverstein’s classic collection of poems and drawings  Where the Sidewalk Ends  fairly explodes with colorful language of the kid-friendly sort. Taken by themselves, the poems range in length from a handful of lines up to three pages, and in breadth from a single amusing thought to a narrative arc or a song’s worth of lyrics. Common childhood themes of disobedience to parental and educational authority, trouble with siblings, chores and fanciful play are addressed in a characteristically irreverent manner, with frequent digressions into pure fantasy and fun. Never crossing over into the excessively precious or maudlin, Silverstein prefers to stick to a more self-conscious and unsentimental tone, gleefully exploring the macabre and outright disgusting topics frequented by children. On nearly every last opening, the text of the verses shares space with Silverstein’s expressive and loosely drawn illustrat
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