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Author: Annie O'Brien

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Illustration from Max and the Tag-along Moon by Floyd Cooper My books tend to explore humanity - emotional, historical, and biographical. The Picture Book Buzz - Interview with Floyd Cooper by Maria Marshall With the passing of illustrator and author Floyd Cooper this month, the children's books field has lost one of its giants. Reading ...continue reading "Floyd Cooper: An Appreciation"

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Illustration by Scott M. Fischer from Lottie Paris and the Best Place by Angela Johnson Last month I received an unexpected and delightful invitation: to meet via Zoom with the “Black Moms of Austria,” the “Black Dads of Germany,” and a number of their allies, to share the Diverse BookFinder’s research on Cross Group books. The contact ...continue reading "The Power of Cross Group Books — Internationally!"

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Illustrations by Theodore Taylor III, Gordon C. James, Jennifer Zivoin, Luisa Uribe, Shane Evans, Noa Denton, and Bryan Collier As we continue to remember, mourn, and work for change, how do we have conversations with children about racial justice? How do we interrupt the pervasiveness of anti-blackness in our nation, to protect Black and Brown ...continue reading "Racial Justice in Picture Books: Countering Anti-Blackness"

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Illustrations by Yuyi Chen, Trisha Hautéa, Christina Forshay, Xun Liu, Dayong Gan, Charlene Chua, Anna Kim, Yao Xiao, Basia Tran, Seo Kim, and Qin Leng Note: This post and list of books are focused on East Asian and Southeast Asian representation, in response to recent anti-Asian attacks that have mostly targeted members of these groups ...continue reading "Centering Asian Girls"

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Last year we created an extensive Holiday Gift Guide based on six of our nine categories. This year some of our team members responded to a simple question -- What are two new books that you'd want to give to a child in your life? -- with these titles (most are 2020, a few are ...continue reading "Gift Guide 2020: New BIPOC Picture Books"

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Illustration by Michaela Goade (Tlingit-Haida) from We Are Water Protectors by Carole Lindstrom (Anishinabe/Metis; enrolled member, Turtle Mountain Band of Ojibwe) Note: This summer I read the middle grade novel, Indian No More by Charlene Willing McManis (Umpqua) with Traci Sorell (Cherokee Nation). In the book, ten-year-old Regina, enrolled in the Confederate Tribes of Grand Ronde, ...continue reading "9 Ways to Lift Up & Learn from Indigenous Voices"

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Illustration by Lauren Tobia from Happy in Our Skin by Fran Manushkin Since we began collecting and coding titles for the Diverse BookFinder in 2015, we've been keeping track of the appearances of bi/multiracial families -- that is, parents and/or children of different races and/or mixed-race people, including families built through transracial adoption. (We include ...continue reading "Multiracial Families in Recent Picture Books"
The image is a photo of author Kao Kalia Yang, head turned and smiling slightly at the camera.

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At the close of Immigrant Heritage Month, also the month in which we honor World Refugee Day, we celebrate the work of an important new picture book writer. In the late 1950's, when the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States of America went to the high mountains of Laos to commission 32,000 Hmong men ...continue reading "A New Voice in Picture Books: Hmong Writer Kao Kalia Yang"

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This is the first post in a series sharing data from our collection that identifies significant gaps in representation of BIPOC characters in picture books. This past month, in honor of Asian and Pacific Islander American (AAPI) Heritage Month — which pays “tribute to the generations of Asian and Pacific Islanders who have enriched America's ...continue reading "Who’s Missing? Asian and Pacific Islander American Biographies"

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Last week Director Krista Aronson and I, as cofounders of the Diverse BookFinder, had the pleasure of joining Andrew Grant-Thomas and Melissa Giraud of EmbraceRace, for a webinar as a follow-up to our action guide on selecting “good” books among those featuring characters who are Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC). One of our ...continue reading "“I HATE FICTION!” — Choosing Diverse Books for Particular Readers"

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