Middle School Monday: T-Shirt Representation

You may not have been expecting to open a Middle School Monday blog post and read about t-shirts, yet here we are.

I love casual dress days and seeing both our students and my fellow teachers displaying their interests and personalities. Seeing a math teacher and YA enthusiast wearing a shirt emblazoned with Welcome to Math Class—May the Odds Be Ever in Your Favor is a complete win. I was excited to advertise my love of books and literature in a similar way.

As I went looking for t-shirts, I found some attractive options in terms of characters and books, but…the choices left me feeling flat.

Representation matters. We know this. We KNOW this. It matters on our shelves. And it matters in how—as the librarian—I am expressing what books I read and love, whether I’m expressing that in the books I personally read, the posters I hang up, or yes, in the books I wear and advertise!

The past few days have been thrilling in terms of more options.

I love Shadowshaper and I’ve written about it before. And before. Seeing a t-shirt depiction from litographs.com with Sierra on the front? Thrilling. [Unfamiliar with Litographs? You can read more here—they make beautiful, wearable art with the text of books.]

This is the first time I’ve purchased a product from Litographs and I can’t wait to see it.

Attention: Litographs. I love this shirt! Please keep expanding your book choices to include more Native authors and authors of color.

This gorgeous shirt is available here.

TeeTurtle.com has adorable shirts on its site of the pop-culture, comic book, and sci-fi/fantasy variety—often with characters depicted in their chibi form.  Recently, they’ve added two shirts I’m excited to wear.

You may not have known that you NEEDED a chibi Luke Cage shirt, but really, how can you go back now?

It’s available here.

This is the first non-chibi shirt I’ve purchased from TeeTurtle, but it’s BLACK PANTHER. Am I more excited about purchasing the Ta-Nehisi Coates penned Black Panther: A Nation Under Our Feet? Of course. [I’ve ordered five copies.] But, I am EXCITED about this shirt. Again. Diverse books can’t just stay on our shelves—they have to be on our walls, in our displays, in our OWN hands, and yes, if possible, on our shirts.

Find it here.

TeeTurtle: Please keep these coming! We need more t-shirts like this!

Where are your favorite places to find shirts that reflect awesome MG and YA books and characters?

Have a great week, everybody! I’m at @BespokeLib if you’re on Twitter [and I highly recommend that you are!].

—Julie Stivers

@BespokeLib

Filed under: Middle School Monday