It was the 2016-2017 school year, and Library Media Specialist and Webmaster Ms. Lori Todd had noticed an increase in Kempsville High School’s English as a Second Language (ESL) population. 

The number of students had jumped from the 2015-2016 school year, having more than quintupled, and there were around 30 students, with language needs such as Spanish and Vietnamese. 

“My purpose as a library media specialist is to ensure that every single student has a reflection of their culture in their library,” Todd said. “So I started out selecting and ordering books in primarily Spanish. So that when those students were brought in by their English teachers or their study block teachers there were options for them to choose from.”

“When you notice a need you try to fill it,” Todd said.

She began by ordering young adult classics: “The Maze Runner” series, “The Diary of a Wimpy Kid” series, “The Hunger Games”, “Divergent”, and “Harry Potter”. 

And the response from the students has been positive, with many ESL students being able to come down with their study hall and find something in their native language.  

“It kind of reinforces the idea that this space is for them too, and not just for the kids that speak English as their native language,” said Todd.  

“I mean, our population has increased so much in the past few years and I think it would be doing a disservice to my job if I didn’t include [foreign language books],” she said. “I do think it’s hard because Spanish students are not the only ESL students that we have. For instance, we have students that are Vietnamese that are categorized as ESL.”

She has worked to supplement the library with books in different languages but has encountered some stumbling blocks. 

“The problem that I’ve encountered is that books in other languages are primarily more expensive than an English novel. And that can range anywhere from doubling the price of the English version, to sometimes even quadrupling it in some cases depending on the specific book,” Todd said. 

There is also the turnaround time for translation; frequently new novels are not released in multiple languages, and it can take close to a year and a half for a novel to be accessible in library format in anything other than the language it was written in. And that is if the book is available to order, which frequently they are not.  

 “…When I started looking into getting books for them there wasn’t a lot out there that was even available to order for them, which was very disheartening because at the end of the day it’s all about getting kids to read,” said Todd. “It doesn’t matter what language they’re reading in to me as long as they’re reading… I want everybody to feel like they belong.” 

Kempsville’s library also receives books from Junior Library Guild, which is a library subscription service. Todd has reached out to them to suggest a Spanish subscription.

“Every month we get a subscription of books,” Todd said.”It would be great if they had a Spanish genre as well so that every month we were adding to our collection, because I know a lot of Virginia Beach High School librarians would be very interested in that.” 

For the past few years she has worked to expand language options in Kempsville’s collection. Currently, the library has 75 Spanish books. Prior to 2016, there were none. 

This year she has taken a different approach, wanting to provide options other than fantasy and science fiction. She created a Google Form in Spanish, and sent it to teachers to share in their ESL study block, wanting students to be able to respond in their native language with the types of books that they want to read. 

Their response? They want to see more horror, and Stephen King, as well as mysteries. 

“So that is my focus right now, is to start supplementing those particular genres in our Spanish language [section],” Todd said.

“Right now we’ve primarily just focused on Spanish books again because of what is out there, and I did spend a good portion of a week, I want to say in October, looking for Vietnamese books and there just wasn’t any options out there. Those are the two groups that I know that there’s a population need here, so I don’t know. Give us five years and it might be a completely different population that we might need to serve; we just have to kind of go with the flow and make sure that… we’re including all types of books when we order.”

Since beginning teaching in 2007, Todd’s approach has been to treat the students as if they were her own child.

“If my children were in a school where they were not native speakers, then I would want them to find a piece of themselves in the library,” Todd said. “Because that is what a library should be. There should be something for everyone.”