Justice and Peace Themes
We are especially seeking books that include insights practices or approaches we found essential for creating just, peaceful cultures. For the Just, Peaceful Classroom Culture Curriculum, used in the first eight weeks of the school year, we developed seven themes with sub-themes. We seek books at each reading level for each of these themes and sub-themes to support children’s ability to create just, peaceful cultures:

• Friendship
• Agreements
• Affirmation
• Core Self
• Transforming Power
• Communication
• Cooperation
• Liberation

Pitfalls of Prejudice
We work toward active anti- racism, sexism, and all forms of prejudice. We take into account common pitfalls described by Kara Newhouse (KQED):

• Show resilience and transformation not only suffering or rigid patterns.
• Go deeper than surface-level diversity.
• Pay attention to intersectionality
• Avoid the sidekick syndrome
• See groups as richly diverse, not as monolithic
• Include #ownvoices from a wide variety of people
• Weed out old materials

Story Quality and Features
We use additional criteria to consider each story’s quality and specific features:

• Storyline is engaging to readers.
• Books/stories may be nonfiction or fiction.
• Authors and characters are from a diversity of communities or multicultural.
• The characters treat each other with respect, kindness, and caring.
• The characters care about the environment and preserve and protect it.
• The books avoid racial bias, gender bias, and stereotypes.
• The books include different religions and viewpoints, but do not proselytize.
• The children have active roles in the story and show positive behaviors.
• The story talks about children’s experiences from their perspective.
• The children or adults learn and demonstrate positive behaviors to deal with situations.
• Children demonstrate honesty, kindness, simplicity and peace.
• Children feel they belong, they are not outcast, and they can rely on others.

The Friends Peace Library adopted the “I Can Read!” levels. It’s a simple intuitive approach for librarians families and children. We clarified each level and added “Level 5: Wide Reading” to bridge from young to young adult readers. This helps children families librarians and teachers gather lots of books at each level to support their children and helps local authors and illustrators to create developmentally supportive books in their own languages and their own cultures and ecologies.

FPT Peace Library Reading Levels

• Very First Books: Board books and books for pre-readers with one word or sentence per page using high-frequency repeated predictable words and phrases or pictures only ABCs rhymes songs and poetry. Pictures of objects match the words. (25-50 words, F&P A-B)
• First Shared Reading: Short stories for reading with children with two lines per page using repeated predictable words and sentences including active engaging stories and limited dialogue. (up to 100 words, F&P C)
• 1-Beginning Reading: Stories of everyday experience for early readers with familiar words and short sentences including action sequences, ideas and details in text and pictures. (up to 250 words, F&P D)
• 2-Reading with Help: Engaging story lines for early readers with longer sentences, challenging words, unfamiliar experiences and interplay between words and pictures. (up to 400 words, F&P E-F)
• 3-Reading Alone: Stories of varied settings and experiences for independent readers with a central character sequence of events over time and complex sentences in paragraphs supported by the pictures. (up to 1,000 words, F&P G-I)
• 4-Advanced Reading: Stories about past present and future events and characters with more complex timelines settings and character relations in short chapters with occasional illustrations. (over 1,000 up to 30,000 words, F&P J-M)
• 5-Wide Reading: A wide range of genres for upper primary students–fiction non-fiction biography fantasy science science-fiction historical fiction novels graphic novels novels in verse–that require careful reading to follow timelines and multiple meanings with some illustrations. (30,000-50,000 words, F&P N-Q)
• Young Adult Books: Longer chapter books fiction and nonfiction with shifts in voice, more symbolism and hopeful outcomes. Readers must infer about characters’ perspectives emotions and realities and reflect on conditions that shape them. Readers question whose voices or identities are heard and affirmed and if the story interrupts or repeats patterns of prejudice and privilege. (200-400 pages)
• Adult Books: Adult fiction and nonfiction books.

We use Fountas and Pinnell (F&P) to guide writers, illustrators, and publishers on book production, such as: thickness, size, and selection of fonts; spacing of letters, words, and sentences; number of words or lines per page; relationship of written words to illustrations; details of illustrations; and so forth.

Because reading levels are used, readers can find books which are not so simple that they get bored and not so difficult that they get overwhelmed or discouraged. Children can pick books that they can read successfully. English-language readers who have access to storybooks at a young age take for granted the skills built naturally through developmentally sequenced storybooks. They develop an identity as a capable reader from a very young age, and build the skills to move beyond decoding to understanding.

Providing a physical example of a leveled reading collection means that librarians and teachers can begin to level books in their own local languages. Parents, teachers, and librarians can enlist writers, illustrators, and publishers to produce books that support reading with meaning and comprehension, closing a major gap in global injustice. We go beyond functional literacy for exploitation as a labor force and marketplace, to reading for understanding, insight, and meaning.