Last week I attended the Princeton Children’s Literature Conference, the highlight of which was a panel titled “Meeting the Needs of Diversity in Children’s Literature.” Moderator Jason Low of Lee & Low Books asked authors Angela Dominquez and Shane Evans how their work helps to “move the diversity needle.” In an audience of children’s literature professionals, I’m sure I was not the only one thinking, “How am I helping to move that needle?” Thanks to studies conducted by the Children’s Cooperative Book Center, we have statistics like the ones above that help us understand why it is so difficult to find the quantities of great multicultural picture books that we need. We know that children benefit from seeing people like themselves in the books they read, which means that for an organization working in urban schools, CLI’s collections must be as diverse as the populations we serve. population, but only 10% of children’s books published in the past 21 years include multicultural content. Here are the facts: people of color make up 37% of the U.S.
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