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NCACL Cultural Diversity Database

Ashleigh
Two speech bubbles - one turquoise and the other lime green. The lime green one has two children's faces in it. Blue and green text reads National Centre for Australian Children's Literature.

Introduction

One of the databases I am highlighting for the NCACL is the Cultural Diversity database that catalogues the comprehensive collection of books written by the culturally diverse population in Australia, and its focus is on understanding similarities and differences across cultures. It has a large scope that covers 400 books, and new books that concentrate of Australia’s culturally diverse population – in particular, featuring those who are living in Australia, and its offerings consist of books usually published in Australia. The Culturally Diverse database allows people to search for authors, illustrators, titles, series, publishers, publication dates, the audience a book is aimed at, and for educators, key concepts, as well as links to the Australian Curriculum as well as the Early Years Learning Framework, with annotations to each book. This database of culturally diverse books also provides parents, caregivers, home-schooling groups, teachers, librarians, and anyone else working with you people quality information and quality resources.

The People Involved

The National Centre for Australian for Children’s Literature consists of expert teachers, teacher librarians, experts in literacy and literature, as well as academics and staff at the ACT Directorate of Education, who gathered during the development and trial of the database, and it was their comments that helped refine the materials chosen and included to ensure a wide range of culturally diverse resources.

Content

The content of the Cultural Diversity database at the NCACL has about 340 books, which explore different cultural experiences such as leaving a country and culture for another, where the experiences could be those of the character or a relative’s experience within the story – an experience which could be traumatic. When characters had a historical reason for leaving, this added depth and understanding, and stories of refugees illustrate that these stories are not always as simple as the media makes them out to be. One of the other things that the stories is the different beliefs as well as commonalities between cultures, and how these are played out between characters through respect and intolerance, illustrating how cultures come to understand each other, especially in picture books. And different cultures and types of storytelling are also represented in a wide array of formats including poetry, picture books, graphic novels, historical fiction, and non-fiction, amongst many others, which means that there is a well-rounded reading experience encapsulated here that allows authors and illustrators to tell powerful stories through a wide variety of mediums – written and visual for research and storytelling techniques, giving a scope to ensure that the various stories and storytelling techniques are represented.

Examining the books

The NCACL receives donations of most Australian children’s books that are published, and they are able to personally examine each book to determine where it fits in and annotate them for the relevant databases.

Sources

The sources used to identify the books are:

Key Concepts

Key concepts in the cultural diversity database include asylum seekers, celebrations, conflict, cross-cultural relations, cultural traditions, detention centres, emigrants, emigration, empathy, family, friendship, history, hope, immigrants, immigration, intolerance, kindness, language, loss, migrants, migration, peace, race relations, racial conflict, racial identity, racism, refugees, relationships, resilience, respect, social justice, social life, tolerance, and war.

To find help searching the database, here are some quick tips.

Here are some additional supporting resources.

Some of the highlights of the Cultural Diversity database are:

We Are Wolves by Katrina Nannestad, which touches on the key concepts of conflict, cross cultural relations, empathy, family, friendship, history, hope, intolerance, kindness, language, loss, peace, racism, refugees, relationships, resilience, social justice, and war. Set in East Prussia in the final days from World War II, the novel sees three siblings, Liesl, Otto, and Mia separated from their family as they are forced to leave their home as the Russians come in – and it is all based on true stories about the Wolfskinder and the moral dilemmas they faced during the days of scavenging and stealing, with a serious tone throughout, but with hints of warmth as the children strive for kindness and heroism. This is a story we don’t often hear about in literature – one that doesn’t get attention, but that represents how cultural ideas can crumble around you and what happens when everything you know is challenged and shown to be something that is not accepted anymore, illustrating how different cultures shape their understanding of the world at different times throughout history. Whilst it does not celebrate Nazism, it shows the damage that two separate and equally damaging extreme ideologies can do during a war, and what it can do to those left behind. This is an important book for cultural diversity as it allows people to see that no ideology is perfect, but that extremes hurt everyone in a society.

 A True Person by Marin Gabia, which touches on detention centres, hope, refugees, and resilience. In this picture book, Zallah and her mother escape a war-torn country and head for freedom in Australia. Yet when they arrive, they are put into a detention centre – and are only released when a campaign to free children from detention is mounted – but Zallah sees those left behind as well. Even though this was published in 2007, it is still a timely and important story about cultural diversity and how a society can and does treat people differently if they don’t like the way they look or assume something about them that isn’t true. It highlights the plight of refugees, which is a topic that has been around for decades, and the incarceration of refugees has often made the news – the lucky few, like Zallah, are allowed to leave detention, but that doesn’t mean others aren’t there still. That is why stories like this are so important – because it allows readers to gain an insight into what these sorts of experiences might be like.

ANZAC Sons: Five Brothers on the Western Front by Allison Marlow Patterson, which touches on the key concepts of family, history, hope, resilience, and war, and is a different take on cultural diversity. In this instance, we look at war again, but from a different perspective – a family affected by the war, and what it means to be descendant from someone who was at the front, and how this affects the family and future generations, but the culture of a country as well. Many books based around the ANZAC legend revolve around Gallipoli, but the ANZACs fought in lots of battles. The importance of culture and cultural diversity in this book comes from the historical artefacts such as maps and postcards to illustrate the cultural impact of war on family and a country – impacts that can happen in many ways and show that any culture and country can be affected by war in a myriad of ways.

Between Us by Claire Atkins touches on the key concepts of asylum seekers, detention centres, emigrants, empathy, family, hope, immigrants, immigration, intolerance, racism, refugees, and social justice. Between Acts is another example of how the asylum seeker experience has been represented in Australian children’s literature. This is a young adult novel about Anahita, an Iranian asylum seeker in a detention camp, but she is allowed to attend the local secondary school – but life is not normal for her. Anahita’s life changes when she meets Jono at school, the son of a Vietnamese security guard, so we have some very different cultures and experiences of seeking refuge represented here. I haven’t read this one yet, but the entry in the NCACL database shows that much like the other three books I have talked about so far, it has something important to say about the role of cultural diversity and how it is represented – in the media and in literature, and the ways literature goes deeper and gives a better understanding about what it means to be from a different culture and the navigation of different aspects of culture – what a war means to different people across the world and how we see war and identity – it always seems so separate but in reality, it is something that is important to all of us. And stories like this, that delve into the difficulties of life in a detention centre for refugees and the misconceptions the public has about them because of the media illustrates that these books are vitally important to help us understand different perspectives.

Another area that the cultural diversity database explores is books about the Holocaust. As I have previously reviewed and profiled the Once series by Morris Gleitzman on my blog, I am going to touch on another  book about the Holocaust, and some other books about cultural diversity that might not be as well-known.  

Let Me Whisper You My Story by Moya Simons, touches on the key concepts of empathy, family, history, hope, and war amidst the Holocaust, and Rachel’s experience as a young German-Jewish girl who survives the Holocaust because she doesn’t speak as instructed by her father and has a focus on those who hide Jews- and after the war is over, other orphans at an orphanage in England hope to find surviving family. Stories like this are poignant and remind us what can happen when we discriminate, and don’t embrace cultural diversity or try to understand it. It allows us to see how someone like Rachel survived, but also, what the war cost her. Books like this set during the Holocaust show the different ways children survived it and what this meant for their culture – that they could live and share their culture – maybe once the threat was gone, but also, shows how they survived in different settings, and this story set in an orphanage focuses on how a child understands this – and the lengths they go to so they can survive.

So Far from Skye by Judith O’Neill touches on the key themes of history, hope, immigration, and resilience. There are many stories of immigration that often focus on current immigration and refugee issues, but going back in history, back to the 1850s there are stories of displacement of Scottish migrants to Australia – those who came by ship and would never see their home again. Published in the early 90s, the historical novel is about Morag and Allan MacDonald who are being forced to leave Skye and head to Australia, a place they have never heard of. Stories about displacement from any country and culture that is different to the one you know because whatever that country, race, culture is, there will always be experiences and feelings that are shared and common and shows that there are there are shared experiences and ones that are unique – but the shared experiences are ones that immigrants can connect to with each other.

The final book that stood out to me is Tiger Daughter by Rebecca Lim, which focuses on the key concepts of compassion, conflict, cultural traditions, empathy, family, friendship, hope, migrants, race relations, racism, resilience and respect. Rebecca Lim drew on her personal experiences of racism and navigating the conflict of two cultures, as well as family expectations of what Wen Zhou and Henry Xiao should be doing versus what they want to do – they want to be themselves, but also feel pressured by cultural expectations to please their families. And yet, they both need to navigate the tricky world of school as well, and what they believe will give them the best chance in the future as well as tragedy striking Henry’s family and how Wen supports him. This is a rare children’s novel that explores the challenging lives of adults and children, particularly in a world where the cultures clash. It is another book that can provide many chances for discussion, as can the other books profiled here because I think readers will all get something different out of these books and understand them in different ways depending on their own cultural background and experiences.

Most of these books can be used for history, English, and geography classes, for a range of ages and I think even the picture books can be good for older children. I have focused on novels here, aimed at upper primary to secondary, as there are other profiles I am going to work on, and this is just a sample of what is available – there was so much to choose from – and so many good examples that I couldn’t include everything. I have included a link here that I hope works for everyone. War, refugees, and other themes that revolve around two or more cultures coming together and trying to understand each other are common themes across many books, and they are themes that I have focused on because they are the ones that seemed to come up the most. Each book however is important and has something different to offer each reader, and that is why this database is so important, because it allows us to see what is on offer and how we communicate across cultures. It can help anyone looking for information on this an insight into what is available.

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Published by Ashleigh

An avid reader and writer, reviewer and author. I love to read just about anything. I enjoy writing about books, reading and writing as well and I dabble in many areas of writing from travel to crime fiction and fantasy. My blog is a way to get how I feel about reading, books and writing out there. I currently receive books to review from various publishers in most genres, but typically don't review romance or horror, or erotica books as I these are genres I have difficulty in reviewing and in general they are not what I enjoy reading.

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