{"id":70056,"date":"2014-04-29T08:00:05","date_gmt":"2014-04-29T13:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/?p=70056"},"modified":"2014-04-29T11:29:11","modified_gmt":"2014-04-29T16:29:11","slug":"why-color-matters-in-childrens-literature","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/?p=70056","title":{"rendered":"Why color matters in Children\u2019s Literature"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Fallon Bleich, Head Editor,\u00a0INALJ Arkansas<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Why color matters in Children\u2019s Literature<\/span><\/h3>\n

\"fallon.bleich\"<\/a>There\u2019s been a lot of press lately on the lack of diversity in children\u2019s lit. I, for one, am trying to become\u00a0a champion behind that issue and work to get more diverse literature not only in libraries but also\u00a0published\u2026because if there is no demand, publishers won\u2019t supply it. Who am I to take on this issue? I\u2019m\u00a0someone who can testify to the power of representing everyone in books; I\u2019m someone who is Native\u00a0American, Japanese, and White; I\u2019m someone who is so vaguely brown<\/em> that I end up being targeted for\u00a0weird racial remarks but also get included in a lot of situations where white people are the other.<\/strong> All of\u00a0these reasons make me a good candidate to take on this issue, but I\u2019m also perfect for it because I\u2019m an\u00a0adult who had to struggle to find relatable characters in the fiction I read as a child.<\/p>\n

Let me start from the beginning: the person I wanted to grow up to be when I was a kid was Claudia\u00a0Kishi from the Babysitter\u2019s Club books<\/strong>. She was cool! Artistic and not stereotypically Asian; she wasn\u2019t\u00a0great at math, she loved art and her grandmother, and she dressed amazingly. But most of all, Claudia\u00a0was the first person I ran into that looked like me. As a kid, that\u2019s a transformative experience. Don\u2019t get\u00a0me wrong, I had read a lot of great stuff up to that point, but it was either filled with all white people or\u00a0animals. I couldn\u2019t aspire to be any of those things, but I could literally grow up to be Claudia. Claudia\u00a0Kishi was my gateway into a world of reading that I could actually relate to, and I think that\u2019s important\u00a0for kids to have access to. The flip side of all of my Claudia adoration is that when I read other materials,\u00a0I enjoyed them, but not as much as having a character that looked like me. So, when I was about 12\u00a0or so, I started devouring adult literature and found the characters that I was looking for; this is not a\u00a0solution for everyone. There are kids out there who will not do that. They will give up and just chalk\u00a0reading up as another experience where they are excluded or that isn\u2019t for them.<\/p>\n

There have been a lot of great strides to shed light on this problem; what\u2019s really problematic for me,\u00a0though, is that it hasn\u2019t changed much since I was reading The Babysitter\u2019s Club<\/strong>. Last year, according\u00a0to the CCBC report (http:\/\/ccbc.education.wisc.edu\/books\/pcstats.asp<\/a>), books about Asians and Asian\u00a0Americans represented just .01% of the total amount published. The numbers are even worse for\u00a0Native Americans, who come in at a measly .006%. So where are kids like me to turn, and should we\u00a0be surprised when kids don\u2019t want to read? If there is nobody to relate to, how can kids really get into\u00a0reading? Obviously, a lot of this is in publishing houses\u2019 hands. If they don\u2019t publish multicultural stuff,\u00a0then we, as librarians, can\u2019t get it into kids\u2019 hands. But, what we can do is try and stock our libraries with\u00a0as diverse materials as possible. We can check the lists and order from publishers who take the time to\u00a0publish awesome materials for kids of all races.<\/p>\n

And most importantly, we can know this information,\u00a0so that when that amazing, mixed-race child like me comes up to the desk to ask for something new to\u00a0read, then we can offer her something that she can relate to.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Do you need resources to help diversify your library? I highly recommend the awards lists from ALA, but\u00a0also Lee and Low (a great publisher that strives to publish diverse works) has a great list of resources on\u00a0this page: http:\/\/blog.leeandlow.com\/2014\/03\/21\/where-can-i-find-great-diverse-childrens-books\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Fallon Bleich, Head Editor,\u00a0INALJ Arkansas Why color matters in Children\u2019s Literature There\u2019s been a lot of press lately on the lack of diversity in children\u2019s lit. I, for one, am trying to become\u00a0a champion behind that issue and work to get more diverse literature not only in libraries but also\u00a0published\u2026because if there is no…<\/p>\n

Read more \u2192<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":59613,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[145],"tags":[69,3592,5708,4563,3835,4377,6155,6154,6153],"class_list":["post-70056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles","tag-article","tag-blog","tag-childrens-books","tag-diversity","tag-fallon-bleich","tag-inalj-arkansas","tag-racial-diversity","tag-racial-diversity-in-literature","tag-why-color-matters-in-childrens-literature"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/fallon.bleich.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1WoMK-idW","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=70056"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70056\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/59613"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=70056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=70056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=70056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}