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We are so excited to bring attention to this blog series written by students in Dr. Margaret Boyle's "Teaching Languages and Culture" course at Bowdoin College. The series highlights the Diverse BookFinder (DBF), not only as a great tool for educators, librarians, and parents, but as an invaluable space where new and important inquiries about racial and cultural ...continue reading "The Representation of Language & Cultural Identity in U.S. Picture Books, A Series (4)"

Intro to the Series We are so excited to bring attention to this blog series written by students in Dr. Margaret Boyle's "Teaching Languages and Culture" course at Bowdoin College. The series highlights the Diverse BookFinder (DBF), not only as a great tool for educators, librarians, and parents, but as an invaluable space where new ...continue reading "The Representation of Language & Cultural Identity in U.S. Picture Books, A Series (2)"

Illustration by Ashley Bryan from Freedom Over Me: Eleven Slaves, Their Lives and Dreams Brought to Life by Ashley Bryan Luis is the Manager of the Courtland S. Wilson branch of the New Haven Public Library in Connecticut and a member of our Advisory Council. In this historic moment of the COVID-19 pandemic, worldwide protests ...continue reading "Humanizing History: How Picture Books Help Us Teach Hard Truths"

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"

Karen Wang is our summer 2020 Diverse BookFinder intern. She is a graduate student at Pratt Institute, pursuing a Master of Library and Information Science to become a children’s librarian. Before transitioning to librarianship, Karen worked in the K-12 educational technology field, developing and implementing programs for students, families, and educators across the country. Karen ...continue reading "Women’s Equality Day 2020: Commemorating a Century of Women’s Suffrage for Some, Not All"

This guest post is co-authored by our summer MLIS graduate student interns, Karen Wang and Sanura Williams. The topic was inspired by Bates student Alex Gilbertson '22, from one of her final projects for our Co-founder and Director Dr. Krista Aronson's Psychology course called "The Power of Picture Books." Here at the Diverse BookFinder, our ...continue reading "Picture Book Portrayals of Economic Struggle in the U.S.: What do the numbers say?"

Sanura Williams is our summer 2020 Diverse BookFinder intern. She is a Library and Information Science graduate student at San Jose State University. Sanura aspires to work as a public librarian with a focus on youth services. She has a passion for celebrating diversity in literature, and in 2016 founded My Lit Box, an online community ...continue reading "Dignity In All Work: Career Day with Essential Workers"
The image is a photo of author Kao Kalia Yang, head turned and smiling slightly at the camera.

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"

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"

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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