Every heritage month creates an opportunity for educators to elevate stories that students may not always encounter organically.

As we close Asian American & Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month, it’s a good time to pause and think about how to put that into practice, creating intentional space for books and voices that reflect the richness and diversity of AAPI communities.

But meaningful representation should never be limited to a single month on the calendar. When students see themselves and their communities reflected in books, they’re more likely to feel connected to reading and to view literacy as something that belongs to them. Inclusive collections also help students build empathy, cultural understanding, and curiosity about experiences beyond their own.

For librarians and educators, AAPI Heritage Month can serve as both a celebration and a checkpoint: an opportunity to evaluate how collections support year-round representation.

Why authentic representation matters

For students, developing a literary identity can take time. They’re more likely to begin to see themselves as readers when they have exposure to stories that feel relevant or personally meaningful to their own experiences.

For AAPI students (or any student coming from a diverse background), authentic books can help validate experiences that might be underrepresented or oversimplified in their curriculum materials and media. For others, these stories create opportunities to better understand the diversity and complexity of cultures outside of their own.

It’s also important to recognize that “AAPI” is not a monolith. There’s no one single cultural experience. So, it’s essential for thoughtful collections to reflect a broad range of perspectives, including East Asian, South Asian, Southeast Asian, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander voices across every genre and story type.

And it’s important to keep in mind that while stories of immigration, discrimination, and resilience remain important, your collection should also include space for joy, humor, fantasy, romance, mystery, adventure, and the mundane trappings of everyday life.

Curating authentic voices

Building inclusive collections starts with intentional curation – prioritizing books created by authors and illustrators with lived experience connected to the cultures and communities represented in the story. This can help students see past stereotypes or generalized portrayals.

As you’re adding new content to your collection, you might consider:

• Contemporary fiction featuring representative protagonists
• Memoirs and biographies highlighting leaders, activists, artists, and scientists 
• Folktales and cultural stories from a variety of regions and traditions 
• Multilingual titles and translated works 
• Narrative nonfiction exploring immigration, identity, history, and community 
• A mix of books offering both historical and contemporary perspectives

For AAPI Heritage month, try a few of the books listed below as a starting point:

• The Oks Are Not OK by Grace K. Shim
• You’re a Winner, Gracie Wei by Kristen Mei Chase and illustrator Basia Tran
• Sun, Moon, and Star: A Folktale from Korea by Nancy So Miller
• The Blue House I Loved by Kao Kalia Yang and illustrator Jen Shin
• Jin Young, In Between by Ellen Oh
• My Mother, the Mermaid Chaser by Jamie Jo Hoang
• The Legend of Sensei Tsinelas by Jason Tanamor,
• The Boy, the Mountain, and the Serpent Who Ate the Moon by Caris Avendaño Cruz.

For a more complete list of titles recommended by Sora’s librarian’s, check out the AAPI Heritage Month list in OverDrive Marketplace.

Navigating collection challenges thoughtfully

Building balanced collections is meaningful work, though it’s not always simple.

As you work to make your collection more representative, you might encounter a range of challenges. Increasingly limited budgets. Inconsistent availability of texts. Differing perspectives in your community. Uncertainty about credibility. Some schools may also inherit older collections containing outdated generalizations.

Thoughtful collection development involves ongoing reflection and evaluation. Some helpful questions to consider include:

• Do students encounter diverse voices throughout the year, or only during heritage months? 
• How are you finding ways to represent multiple cultures and perspectives? 
• Do books portray characters as multidimensional individuals? 
• Are students able to access stories across genres, reading levels, and formats?

Digital collections like Sora can also help schools expand access more flexibly, especially when shelf space or print budgets are limited. Ebooks and audiobooks allow librarians to refresh collections more frequently and respond to changing student interests. Audiobooks, in particular, can deepen engagement through pronunciation, multilingual dialogue, and oral storytelling traditions.

Student-led spotlight ideas

One of the best ways to strengthen engagement is by inviting students to help highlight and recommend titles themselves. Student-led activities help move representation from a passive display into an active community conversation.

Some ideas include:

• Student recommendation shelves or digital reading lists
• “Read Around the World” challenges focused on authors from different regions 
• Student-designed heritage month displays featuring quotes, artwork, or cultural connections 
• Book clubs centered on contemporary AAPI authors or graphic novels 
• Classroom or library discussion prompts exploring identity, belonging, and perspective 

Paying attention to what students request and recommend often reveals opportunities to strengthen your collection in meaningful ways.

A year-round commitment

Heritage months create valuable opportunities for visibility and celebration, a chance to take time to intentionally evaluate and refresh your collection. But inclusive collections should remain a year-round priority.

Because when students regularly encounter authentic, diverse stories, the library can become more than just a big room with books. It becomes a space for your students can explore their identity, develop empathy, and open themselves to new perspectives that help them better understand themselves and the world around them – opportunities that can have a lasting impact on their sense of belonging and reading engagement.