For Black History Month, the Library every year creates a display to highlight books and achievements by Black American authors. This year I had the opportunity to design and create the display, along with the help of the other leaders in library media. For the display, I wanted something that not only showcased the books in the library, but sent a clear message about censorship and the deeply entrenched impact of Black Americans in the US, especially in this political climate. From the beginning I knew I wanted to use a tree to emphasize this relationship, however, my first challenge came from figuring out how to incorporate the tree and books into my design. Eventually, after a suggestion from Eve, to use the books as the fruit on the tree, I immediately thought of the song Strange Fruit by Billie Holiday and decided that the display would be inspired by the lyrics and meaning of the song. From there everything came into place and I was able to create a display that successfully captured my original thought process and message I wanted to send.

To help promote literacy month within the school, we created a banner that advertises this years  theme, “Word Shape Worlds”, and hopefully would catches our students eyes and persuade them into coming into the library to participate. I worked with other class periods to help plan and create the banner. I took their ideas and tweaked/sketched them out until we could decide on a feasible design that not only captured the theme but looked good as well. Together we painted the banners, and though there were some slight miss ups along the way, we were able to come up with solutions to ensure that this banner turned out exactly how we wanted it to. Now its hanging up proudly in the stairwell as a constant reminder of what going on in the library this month.