This week, we were assigned to read two articles that had to do with Diversity in Children’s Books. For this post, I will be giving my responses on this issue.
The two articles we read were Here I am by Brian Pinkney and Children’s Books: Still an All-White World? by Kathleen T. Horning. I personally liked Here I am better because it is more story based while the Children’s Books: Still an All-White World? is more fact based.
I think diversity in Children’s book is something that had gotten better over time. This could be because of stories like Pinkney or because of people realizing that there is not a lot of diversity and they want to change that. Either way, it is pretty clear that diverse children’s book are not as popular as non diverse books.
Looking at Horning’s article, she uses a lot of interesting points involving many statistics and has a handy chart. However, one thing I found important in this article is when Horning writes, “A lot of people are quick to blame the publishing industry. But publishers can’t just make manuscripts magically appear.” I think this is so important to understand because in my opinion, the blame for less diverse children book’s is not just on one group.
As I said before, it seems like diversity in children books is getting better and better but we still have a ways to go. This can be helped by teacher immensely. If teachers use a variety of book in their classroom. This exposes the students to things they encounter throughout their lives. Exposing them to a variety at a young age will only do good for them. Of course, this is a teacher’s decision and how they want their classroom to run. I just think it would be a great idea.
Until next time,
-Rachel
Rachel's Mind 