Browse some of the team’s favorite titles that deal with specific racial themes.
My second grandchild and first granddaughter just arrived this month, and I have babies on the brain. So it’s delightful to notice that the last three years have birthed a wonderful batch of brand-new, beautiful picture books about babies, featuring characters who are BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, & People of Color)! Two trends we’re cheering in […]
Books about going back to or starting school, like those in our first post, can tell stories about an exciting new adventure, an everyday event, or a rich experience of culture. Or, like the titles in this post geared toward older children, going to school books that feature Black and Indigenous people and People of […]
Read More… from Back to School! Part II: Access, Equity & Inclusion
I was really eager to read this set of #OwnVoices books with the expectation that they would be ones with which I could identify. But by the time I was halfway through, the characters and their stories felt foreign to me. After a summer as the Diverse BookFinder’s student research fellow, racial and cultural representation in […]
My favorite bookshelf is in pieces — literally. Like a child’s Tinker Toy set waiting to be assembled, the shelf’s parts lie in a bright red bin. One by one, librarians fit the scattered wooden dowels, blocks, sliders, and flats together until they form a home for 30 diverse picture books. Once those books are […]
Read More… from August Shelfie: How to Start a Community Conversation with a Book About Immigration
Picture book biographies and books that represent a social justice cause, with young people as the main characters, are powerful tools that allow younger children to identify injustices, develop empathy for others, and recognize their place in the world. One of the many reasons I love my job as an elementary school Library Teacher/Media Specialist […]
Read More… from July Shelfie: Picture Books as Tools to Take a Stand
We recently came across Ashley Fetters’ article, “Where Is the Black Blueberries for Sal?” (The Atlantic, May 2019), which addresses the dearth of Black characters within the very frequent exploration of the Great Outdoors in children’s picture books. The article notes that there are, sadly, only a handful of books that defy this trend (all 4 titles mentioned appear […]
Read More… from Where are the books about Black Kids in Nature?
The Diverse BookFinder collection includes 308 titles with Latinx characters at the date of this post, which we have coded in these categories. The most obvious takeaway from our statistics is that Latinx characters are overwhelmingly represented (more than 60%) in books of cultural particularity, the category we call “Beautiful Life: A Focus on Culture.” […]
Read More… from Latinx Representation in Picture Books: A Focus on Illustration
The state of Black picture book biographies is strong, with new titles regularly adding to the diversity and vibrancy of portrayals of African American life. Of the 607 picture books (as of this date) in the Diverse BookFinder catalog which feature African or African American characters, nearly 1/3 are biographies. Among the 288 biographies in […]
As Asian American and Pacific Islander (API) Heritage Month 2018 winds up, the Diverse BookFinder has 291 books with Asian/Pacific Islander/Asian American characters identified in our current collection. (We are constantly adding titles, so these numbers keep changing. Also, we code by character, not title, so a number of these characters may appear in books with white […]
Read More… from Representations of Asians and Asian Americans in Recent Picture Books
Luis is the Manager of the Courtland S. Wilson branch of the New Haven Public Library in Connecticut. He is a member of the Diverse BookFinder Advisory Council. I was first introduced to the Diverse BookFinder when I met co-founder Anne Sibley O’Brien at a workshop in March 2018. The workshop was sponsored by the […]
Read More… from Why Diversifying Your Library’s Youth Collection is “Worth the Money”
This project is made possible with contributions from the following institutions:
