Literature for Young Readers
How far have we come? Or Not?
Diversity in Children’s Books 2015 Infographic
Citation:
Huyck, David, Sarah Park Dahlen, Molly Beth Griffin. (2016 September 14). Diversity in Children’s Books 2015 infographic. sarahpark.com blog. Retrieved from https://readingspark.wordpress.com/2016/09/14/picture-this-reflecting-diversity-in-childrens-book-publishing/
Huyck, David, Sarah Park Dahlen, Molly Beth Griffin. (2016 September 14). Diversity in Children’s Books 2015 infographic. sarahpark.com blog. Retrieved from https://readingspark.wordpress.com/2016/09/14/picture-this-reflecting-diversity-in-childrens-book-publishing/
Statistics compiled by the Cooperative Children’s Book Center, School of Education, University of Wisconsin-Madison: http://ccbc.education.wisc.edu/books/pcstats.asp
Released for non-commercial use under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
Diversity in Children’s Books 2018 Infographic
Citation: Huyck, David and Sarah Park Dahlen. (2019 June 19). Diversity in Children’s Books 2018. sarahpark.com blog. Created in consultation with Edith Campbell, Molly Beth Griffin, K. T. Horning, Debbie Reese, Ebony Elizabeth Thomas, and Madeline Tyner, with statistics compiled by the Cooperative Children’s Book Center, School of Education, University of Wisconsin-Madison: http://ccbc.education.wisc.edu/books/pcstats.asp. Retrieved from https://readingspark.wordpress.com/2019/06/19/picture-this-diversity-in-childrens-books-2018-infographic/.
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How far have we come? Is it far enough? What would make the progress more significant? How do these statistics relate to the population of the United States? Interested in your comments and assessment. Comment below.
Great, if you're animals/others, but there's still a long way to go for children of First Nations, Latinx, Asian Pacific & African Americans to see themselves in children's books. Hopefully, this will change soon!
ReplyDeleteUS Census Bureau data for reference
ReplyDeletehttps://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045218
I feel like books have become so much more diverse since I was a child, so I can only imagine how disheartened I would be by the percentage of books focusing on minority characters in 1990. Clearly, however, the results of this info-graphic show that not nearly enough has been done to include minority characters. With the rest of the country, I struggle to understand the recent mass shootings in Ohio and Texas. Although the reasoning behind the Dayton shooting is currently unclear, the shooting in El Paso appears to clearly be related to white supremacy.
ReplyDeleteChildren's literature could play an important role in ending the racial divide that exists in this country. There is so much ignorance and fear of the unknown and it builds into the hatred that has gripped so many. For young children, much of this hate comes from ideas shared at the children's home. Children's literature could expose these children to ideas different from those shared at home. Publishing companies, libraries, and schools need to make a commitment to exposing students to diverse characters from early childhood books through young adult literature. I truly feel that exposing and teaching students about different cultures, whether in fiction or non-fiction books will help students develop more knowledge and empathy toward different cultures and minority groups.
I think we are getting there... the statistics certainly are reassuring. However, I think we also need more authors of color. Children's literature is "overwhelmingly written by white authors," says Michelle Martin and Carolyn Finney in this interesting article, tweeted by #WeNeedDiverseBooks: https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2019/05/the-lack-of-diversity-in-childrens-books-about-nature/590152/
ReplyDeleteThis article also highlights the lack of diverse authors: https://blog.leeandlow.com/2018/05/10/the-diversity-gap-in-childrens-book-publishing-2018/ This dismal number has not changed much over the past few years, despite the number of books featuring diverse main characters and the number of award-winning diverse books increasing. This would certainly make the progress more significant.