Initiated in 2021, UWM’s new collection of international children’s and young adult books highlights experiences from outside of the United States through literature, both in original languages and in translation. The growing collection will showcase the richness of children’s literature around the world, as well as the wide and often disparate range of publishing and access, where reading may be for pleasure, for literacy, or where books in local languages are scarce or non-existent. The collection is also intended as a resource for the local immigrant and refugee communities in Milwaukee and southeastern Wisconsin.
The Curriculum Collection will house two copies of each title, one in a research collection, and another available for lending. At present, represented languages include: Spanish, English, Turkish, Ukrainian, Portuguese, Japanese, French, Korean and Greek, with forthcoming purchases including Arabic, Swahili, Xhosa, Zulu, Afrikaans, Burmese, Karen, Farsi, Chinese, Somali, Hmong, Swedish, German, Italian, Slovenian, Polish—25 languages and counting. Watch the ICYAL book collection grow over time on this Google Map.
