DIVERSITY IN CHILDREN'S LITERATURE

Teachers have the opportunity to make small, yet important decisions to incorporate materials and methods in their current classrooms to support students who are underrepresented, and to minimize the disconnect between the changing student population and the teacher population. While there are programs, websites, and statements about these materials, one of the easiest implementations for current teachers is through the books in classroom libraries. Classroom libraries have come under scrutiny because of the significant role books can play on students’ perception of themselves and the understanding of the viewpoints and values of others different from them (McNair, 2016). This scrutiny has focused on the representation of the historically underrepresented groups in the books being placed on the shelves of classroom libraries. 

In 1990, Rudine Sims Bishop described books to be windows, mirrors, and sliding glass doors for young people. Children need to see themselves reflected in books like a mirror. On the other hand, children need books to act as windows into the world around them—to see experiences different than their own. Bishop feels strongly that if children see too much of their own reflection in a country that has representation from many cultures, then they can fall into an ethnocentric point of view on the world. If children cannot find themselves in a book, the images of themselves can become distorted, resulting in a devalued feeling of self. Students of both dominant and nondominant cultures need a balance of window and mirror books (Bishop, 1990). By experiencing diverse children’s literature on a daily basis, children will be able to broaden their perspectives of the world around them, and develop understanding and empathy for a global society. Research shows the importance of the inclusion of books that represent different cultures and experiences in classroom libraries.

Although educators and other professionals are aware of the need for children’s literature to be diverse and reflect a multitude of experiences, there is a lack of books that would fall into this category (Bickmore, Xu, & Seridan, 2017; Crisp, Knezek, et. al., 2016; Koss, Martinez, Johnson, 2016; McNair, 2016; Riley, Crawford-Garrett, 2016; Thomas, 2016). The Caldecott Award is awarded by the American Library Association annually to honor a picture book with distinguished illustrations (Association for Library Service to Children, 2018). Books receiving the Caldecott Medal have a high probability of being found on the shelf in an early childhood classroom. Of the 111 books that were recognized or honored in the last 25 years, 71% of the protagonists are white, 19% are black, 6% are Asian, Latino/a, or biracial. Additionally, 60% of the protagonists are male, 12% of the protagonists have a physical disability, and 51% are set in North America (Koss, Martinez, Johnson, 2016). There are other awards that have been created to award books written by diverse authors, but this further isolates these books (Koss, Martinez, Johnson, 2016). The Cooperative Children’s Book Center examined 3,500 children’s books published in 2014 and found that only 11% contained characters or themes about African Americans, Asians, Latino/as, or American Indian. This statistic has changed very little in over twenty years (Crisp, Knezek, et. al., 2016, Thomas, 2016).

In 2015, the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) released a position statement on diverse literature recognizing the importance and lack of diverse literature for young readers. The NCTE (2015) wrote: "The absence of human, cultural, linguistic, and family diversity in children’s and young adult literature attests to the growing disparity and inequity in the publishing history in the United States. Stories matter. Lived experiences across human cultures including realities about appearance, behavior, economic circumstance, gender, national origin, social class, spiritual belief, weight, life, and thought matter"  (para. 1).

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