Books to represent every child

All children deserve to be represented in their classrooms and see themselves in their literary heroes. We want to make sure students throughout Calgary elementary schools have access to books that have characters of color, authors of color and anti-racist narratives.

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For Students, By Students

We are a student-led initiative that is striving to create equal representation for children of color in the literature in their classrooms. Since July 2020 we have been actively raising funds to purchase children’s books that are written by or feature people from the BIPOC community. In addition to monetary donations, we organize physical book drives and donation boxes within local supporting businesses and book stores.

Recent Updates

  • The Alexander Writers Centre Mentorship Program
    The Alexandra Writers’ Centre Society (AWCS) has opened a Call for Applications for Own Voices Alberta 2021, a mentorship program for BIPOC writers in Alberta who are at the start of their literary journey. More information and links to forms are at Own Voices Alberta 2021 Deadline for submission of applications is on February 26…
  • Author Feature: Sylv Chiang
    How did you end up being the author of children’s books? I’ve always loved to read and write. In Grade One I said that I was going to be an author when I grew up.  I used to write for fun with my friends in elementary school, things like fake newspapers and even a short…
  • Author Feature: Angela Ahn
    What path brought you to being an author?   Like most people who majored in English, I had passing dreams of writing a book. It mostly involved thinking about a great opening line, writing it down and then doing nothing else about it. I suppose on some level, I always knew putting words down to…
  • The Next Page YYC Physical Book Drive
    We are very excited to announce that we have partnered with our regular book supplier, The Next Page, as our second physical book drive location. We want to make the donation process as personalized as possible and we hope that being able to pick a specific book for donation will help bring you one step…
  • ILI Quarterly Review: Letter from the Team
    Hello I.L.I. community, My name is Madeline Antony, and as the co-founder of I.L.I I wanted to give a quick summary of what we have accomplished as a community thus far – and what is coming next for I.L.I. We are coming up on our three month anniversary at the end of September and here…