Our Story

Our work started in 2010, when Professor Krista Aronson and author/illustrator Anne Sibley O’Brien collaborated on a research project in Lewiston, Maine designed to explore how picture books depicting positive relationships across cultural boundaries could be used to improve non-Somali children’s views towards Somali children, and vice versa (for more, see Our Research). As depictions of Somali/non-Somali friendships were lacking, they wrote their own books and began a deeper inquiry about the number and nature of diverse books.

In 2013 Krista began visioning a content analysis of diverse picture books with Annie and then senior thesis student Brenna Callahan (Bates ‘15). Krista received an initial grant from Bates College to start building a physical collection to analyze. Working together many Sunday afternoons since then, we have developed a deep understanding of and appreciation for racially and culturally diverse picture books, which we are happy to share with you.

The Diverse BookFinder founding team

Our Founders & Core Team

We are academics and professionals with a focus on race and culture in the fields of psychology, children’s books, library science, and gender studies who care deeply about representation in children’s books.

Dr. Krista Aronson
Director & Founder

Krista is an Associate Dean of Faculty and Professor of Psychology at Bates College. Her scholarship focuses on illuminating how people come to understand complex social constructs like race and ethnicity, including how children process and understand race as well as appropriate, effective and productive ways to discuss this topic with them; specifically, the effective use of picture books to enhance intercultural relationships and self-understanding during childhood. Her own identity as a biracial woman deeply informs her work. The Diverse BookFinder and associated work are the focus of her active research, which represents a substantial portion of the professional effort of faculty at Bates.

Anne Sibley O’Brien
Founder

Annie is an award-winning author and illustrator of thirty-eight books about diverse children and communities, whose work has regularly been cited for attention to authentic cultural details. She majored in Studio Art at Mount Holyoke College, spending her junior year at Ewha Women’s University in Seoul, Korea. She has also been engaged in education about multicultural literature, diversity and antiracism for more than forty years. Her experience of being raised bilingual and bicultural in South Korea as the daughter of White American medical workers was the catalyst for her lifelong focus on human difference.

Brenna Callahan
Founder

Brenna graduated from Bates College in 2015, where she studied Race and Education and French and Francophone Studies. Brenna’s interest in diverse picture books is inspired by her work with an early literacy intervention program in Maine and her experiences reading with students of color. She completed her master’s in clinical social work at Smith College.

Marianne Williams
Library Liaison

Marianne is the Humanities Librarian at Bates College. Prior to coming to Bates, she was the Librarian-in-Residence at the University of Arkansas, where she specialized in supporting and conducting research on equity and diversity initiatives in higher education across the United States. Her research focuses on critical information literacy practices that teach folks how to be civically engaged, responsible researchers with a particular focus on social justice, diversity, and inclusion.


Our Advisory Council & Research Collaborators

Our Advisory Council is comprised of experts in children’s literature — librarians, educators, book editors and agents, and diverse book advocates — who help ensure that our work makes an essential contribution in their respective fields. Our Research Collaborators are academic scholars from various fields who help ensure that our work remains at the forefront of inquiry and knowledge production.

Aishah Abdul-Musawwir

Since 2007, Aishah has been a Library Teacher for the Cambridge Public School District in Massachusetts, in an elementary school which serves children from grades PreK – 5. Her journey in education began with homeschooling her 6 children and teaching kindergarten students at a private school in Sharon, MA. She went on to complete the Master’s of Education/Library Media Specialist degree program at Cambridge College, presenting a capstone project on “Choosing Authentic Islamic Literature for the Elementary School Library.” As an African American Muslim woman/mother/educator, she recognized the lack of authentic Islamic literature in the elementary public school libraries and worked with other Muslim educators to provide schools with professional development seminars about Islamic culture and customs, as well as the common misconceptions voiced in the media. Aishah continues to work tirelessly not only to introduce quality, diverse literature to her students and colleagues but to make sure her students view the “mirrors and windows” of their world, helping them to see themselves as well as develop an awareness of the world around them. Aishah also writes picture book reviews for Horn Books and enjoys reading with her 7 grandchildren.

I hope that the Diverse BookFinder serves as a tool for families and educators to discover quality, diverse children’s literature, support curriculum, and enlighten readers to past and present literature that has not served the purpose of diverse representation.

~Aishah
Dr. Andrea Breau

Andrea served as our first, full-time Project Coordinator from December 2018 through September 2020. She came to us with past experience in both public libraries and public schools, and a rich background in diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts within academia and non-profit organizations. Andrea is a feminist youth studies scholar whose work focuses on how white and Muslim immigrant youth in predominantly white spaces narrate their racial-ethnic identities through gender, sexuality and religion. As a white parent raising a mixed race child in her Maine hometown, Andrea’s interest in books that give young children access to the literature, art, and language they need to imagine a better world into being — and create their own stories within it — is as profoundly personal as it is political. Andrea earned her BA from Colby College, and her MA and PhD from The Ohio State University — where she taught for the better half of a decade — all in the field of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies. She has served on the Board of the YWCA of Central Maine and currently serves as a County Advisor for the Maine Community Foundation.

Of the many amazing tools out there that give us important and revealing data about diverse books, I love the uniqueness of the DBF in its exclusive focus on books that feature BIPOC characters!

~Andrea
Kirsten Cappy

Kirsten is the co-founder of I’m Your Neighbor Books, a website that features children’s books set in New Arrival and New American communities. The site sorts books by culture and country of origin, allowing schools, libraries, and organizations to best select and share books that represent their neighborhoods. In 2017, she and a team of librarians and authors put a curated collection of I’m Your Neighbor picture books on the road to create pop-up community conversations on immigration. The Welcoming Library, circulating in regions nationwide, uses picture books with embedded discussion questions to build dialogue about belonging and welcoming. These projects are created and maintained by Kirsten’s company, Curious City. Curious City develops library programming, classroom activities, and larger community projects that center children’s literature. Kirsten has a B.A. in Anthropology from Wheaton College.

The Diverse Book Finder challenges us to not just acquire diverse books, but to thoughtfully curate diverse books. The offered tools help us explore how our picture books collections can limit the representation of true community and how thoughtful curation can both reflect and connect with true community.

~Kirsten
Luis Chavez-Brumell

Luis is passionate in the belief that stories can be used to increase our understanding of the world. This belief has led him to some great opportunities ranging from documentary film work, AmeriCorps program management, and Public Libraries. He is proud to work in his hometown of New Haven, CT as a library manager where he has managed the Young Minds and Family Learning Department and currently manages the Courtland S. Wilson Branch, which serves as a resource for a diverse neighborhood. Luis believes that the Diverse BookFinder “helps us make sense of the picture book world as it currently is, but can serve as guidance for what picture books can become to increase the next generation’s understanding of the world in a meaningful way.”

I hope that the Diverse Book Finder can create an understanding of the power of picture books…I believe that acknowledging the imperfections of what has come before can motivate us to create and do better.

~Luis
Laura Beals D’Elia

Laura is currently the Library Teacher at the Armstrong Elementary School in Westborough, MA. She has been a school librarian since 2002 and has a BA in English and Children’s Literature from Framingham State University and a MLIS from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She has presented at various conferences such as the Massachusetts School Library Association Conference, the Christa McAuliffe Technology Conference, MassCUE, MTA Summer Conference, MTA New Teachers Conference, and the American Association of School Libraries Conference in Hartford. She also presented an EdTalk on “Razing Readers” at the MTA Summer Conference in 2013. She was a co-organizer of Edcamp Boston for 7 years, the Massachusetts School Library Association’s Professional Learning Committee Co-Chair for 2 years, and a recipient of the 2017 MSLA Service Award. Laura and her elementary library colleagues post and share at weslibraries.westboroughk12.org.

It is my hope that the Diverse BookFinder helps educators like myself find, purchase, and share titles that make me rethink the stories I share with my students.

~Laura
Kait Feldmann

Kait joined Scholastic in May of 2014 and is an Editor at Orchard Books, where she is building a list of picture books and graphic novels. She is excited to be working with talented debut authors and illustrators such as Aida Salazar, Molly Mendoza, Jon Lau, and Sarah Jung. Kait is a proud hapa (mixed-race Chinese) and founding member of People of Color in Publishing. She is a strong advocate for diverse representation on and beyond the page and is particularly passionate about editing humorous and heartfelt stories featuring kids of color.

I hope that the Diverse BookFinder will aid in putting diverse books into the hands of ALL readers, and will emphasize the need for diversity within diverse books.

~Kait
Jane Harrell

Jane is President of ’cause Digital Marketing and specializes in helping cause-focused organizations make a difference and a profit at the same time. Jane’s run consumer communications and publishing for multi-billion-dollar companies as well as international web leaders. Her projects have been featured by TIME, INC.com and Animal Planet and won awards from Propel Portland, Women In the Pet Industry, The Webby Awards and more. In 2020 she was nominated as a Top 50 Tech Visionary by InterCon. As an LGBTQIA+, Caucasian woman of non-Judeo-Christian upbringing, Jane grew up acutely aware of how the world puts humans into boxes and how that can impact a child’s sense of identity and self-worth. When not traveling for work, Jane lives in Biddeford, Maine with her partner, their rescue pets and, sometimes, a foster son or daughter.

I am honored to have worked with the Diverse BookFinder team since its website launch and to support expansion of representation in children’s picture books.

~Jane
Cheryl Klein

Cheryl is the editorial director at Lee & Low Books — the nation’s largest publisher of multicultural books for children and young adults — where she edits picture books, chapter books, and novels. She is also the author of the adult book The Magic Words: Writing Great Books for Children and Young Adults and three picture books. Prior to her work at Lee & Low, she spent sixteen years at Arthur A. Levine Books/Scholastic. She is passionate about diverse books as vehicles for justice, equity, and education, as well as good art and fresh storytelling, because there are so, so many wonderful stories that still need to be told and heard. You can find her online at cherylklein.com and @chavelaque. 

The Diverse BookFinder moves beyond the idea of “Who” is represented in diverse books to the What, When, and Where people are represented in them. In so doing, it highlights both How all children need to see multifaceted images of themselves and others to understand our rich and complex world, and Why we need to publish and purchase more diverse books to fill out those spaces.  ~Cheryl

~Cheryl
Kirin Nabi

Kirin reviews children’s and young adult Islamic fiction books at www.islamicschoollibrarian.wordpress.com. The blog is a result of her love of literature and belief that fiction can be a powerful tool in empowering youth, shaping perceptions, breaking down stereotypes, and opening doors. Kirin graduated from the University of Utah with a degree in mass communications and a minor in sociology. She taught 2nd, 4th, 5th, and 6th grade at the Islamic School of Rhode Island before moving to Kansas City, MO, where she taught high school journalism and yearbook. In 2009, she returned to Utah where she helped run her children’s PTO at Iqra Academy, hosting literary activities and book fairs. In 2012, her dream was realized when she became the school librarian at Annoor Academy in Knoxville, TN. When she relocated to Alabama, Kirin found herself longing for the days as a librarian organizing book clubs, hosting daily story times, and running reading programs. She started hosting monthly story times at the local mosque for Muslim children, and coordinating interfaith story time activities with different faith groups. These experiences fueled her lifelong passion of keeping up to date with how Muslims are represented in children’s fiction, following Muslim authors, and getting her Muslim students and non-Muslim friends to use fiction to see themselves in different lights, and appreciate others in the process.

The Diverse BookFinder will hopefully become a standard resource for teachers creating lesson plans, for publishers looking at voids in their catalogue, and for parents trying to broaden their children’s options.

~Kirin
Marcela Peres

Marcela is the Library Director at the Lewiston Public Library in Maine. Her professional interests include community engagement, equity and inclusion within the library and information science field, and the importance of graphic novels and comic books within library collections. Before moving to Maine, Marcela lived and worked in Florida, and moved with her family to the United States from Brazil as a toddler. She earned her MLIS from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and holds a BA from Cornell University.

The Diverse BookFinder gives us a wholly unique tool for rooting out any problematic trends in what stories we currently hold, and perhaps most importantly, gives us a roadmap for improving how we make decisions about adding or removing titles over time.

~Marcela
Deborah Tomaras

Deborah has been a cataloging librarian for more than sixteen years; her interest in creating and modifying controlled vocabularies includes a stint as the NACO Coordinator at The New York Public Library. Deborah joined the Diverse Book Finder project to help explore the limitations of traditional cataloging and publishing languages (like LCSH, LCSHAC and BISAC) in describing diversity in picture books. She helped standardize the vocabulary developed by other team members, determined how the vocabulary could interact with traditional book cataloging, and provided a framework for describing the vocabulary to other librarians. She earned her MLS from the University of Maryland at College Park, and presently serves as the Metadata and Resource Management Librarian at Marist College in New York.

I hope the Diverse BookFinder database/vocabulary can help better describe what’s existent in the publishing world to help influence future directions of diversity in children’s book publishing.

~Deborah

Our Undergraduate Research Assistants

Yueh Qi Chuah ’22

Yueh Qi is a Bates College student from Malaysia majoring in Neuroscience. Growing up in a multiracial country, she enjoys learning about the representation and celebration of race, culture, and identity in society.

I hope that more BIPOC children have the opportunity to see themselves represented in their bedtime stories so that they can recognize their self-worth.

~Yueh
Isabella David ‘22


Isabella is a Bates College student from New York City majoring in Politics. She loves reading children’s books because they remind her of home.

As a Hispanic woman, growing up I always wished there was more representation of my culture in books.

~Izzy
Nissim Gurung ’24

Nissim is a Bates college student from Nepal majoring in economics and environmental studies. 

“Growing up in a country  with over 101 ethnicities and 92 languages I was very lucky to see diversity through a closed lens. However, being part of the ethnic minority, I was often lost in my own sense of identity. It is so important that children feel represented, seen and heard from an early age. Hence, I am thrilled to be a part of DBF which is consequently building the bridge to such vision.” – Nissim


Our Graduate Interns

Winter 2022

Laura Gaskill

Laura has just completed her final semester of the MLIS program at San Jose State University. She holds a BA in Child and Adolescent Development from San Francisco State University, and worked as a reading teacher, early childhood educator, and freelance writer before deciding to pursue librarianship. Her passion for diverse children’s literature began during her work as an early childhood educator, where she witnessed firsthand the impact that authentic representation in picture books has on the lives of young children. She is excited to pursue a library career where she can advocate for diverse and inclusive representation in children’s literature, and strive to make library spaces safe and accessible to all.

Diana Palacio

Diana is an online MLIS graduate student at the University of Washington. She was born and raised in Las Vegas, Nevada, and hopes to become a children’s librarian in her hometown. She is currently a Multiservices Assistant at her local public library. Before pursuing a degree in library sciences she studied biology with a concentration in ecology and evolution at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas. Diana is interested in public librarianship and bilingual children’s literature.

Savannah Wright

Savannah graduated from Louisiana State University in 2017, where she studied English with a concentration in Creative Writing. During her time there, she interned for literary agencies and pursued her interests in learning more about the publishing industry. At present, she is an MLIS student at Texas Woman’s University, in hopes of serving as a young adult librarian and working to promote diverse works. 

Fall 2021

Sonia Belasco


Sonia
 is an MLIS student at San Jose State University. She holds an MSS from the Bryn Mawr Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research and an MFA in Creative Writing from California College of the Arts. Before deciding to go into librarianship in 2020, she spent much of her professional life working as a mentor, tutor, and therapist for children and teens. As a freelance writer and editor, she has worked with a wide variety of clients to help them shape everything from website copy to dissertations to novels. She is also the author of three published YA and queer romance novels of her own. She believes passionately that everyone deserves access to information, resources, and stories that reflect their experiences.

Gaby Jones

Gaby is a graduate student at Texas Woman’s University pursuing a Master of Library Science Degree to become a children’s librarian. Growing up in Mexico where access to relevant books was limited, she knows first hand how powerful free access and choice can be in fostering a lifelong reading passion. She now hopes to provide young readers with meaningful options that can launch or bolster their own reading journeys. She previously worked as a bilingual elementary teacher for 15 years. She currently teaches Spanish and Mexican culture.

Summer 2021

Esther Davis

Esther is finishing their Masters in Library Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Before entering graduate school, they oversaw the children’s and young adult sections of a local bookstore, where they ensured the store’s titles reflected and celebrated their community’s diversity. When Esther first read a book with a nonbinary protagonist who got a joyful ending, the affirmation they felt in seeing someone like them on the page confirmed the necessity of literature that allows all readers to see people like themselves thriving. They are interested in working in youth services to support and amplify the voices of children and teens.

Amy George

Amy is in the last year of her Masters in Library and Information Sciences from the University of Maryland. She worked for years in public history and nonprofits, changing careers when she became a parent. Outside of her studies, she enjoys reading, knitting, and gardening. Amy is excited to pursue her library career and is passionate about promoting diversity and accessibility in whatever capacity she can.

Spring 2021

Daphne Revie

Even though Daphne has had a passion for children’s her whole life, she got her undergrad in Zoology. She then worked as a zookeeper for 10 years and earned an MS in Animal Behavior before deciding to stay home with her children. During that time her love of children’s books was kindled anew. She worked hard to find books for her children that depicted a wide range of people, but made a special effort to find books that reflected her Dominican culture. This goal perfectly married her love of research with her love of books and she decided to pursue an MLIS degree from the University of North Carolina in Greensboro. Finding working with information very fulfilling, she also hopes that when people who look like her, find her in these places of learning, they will more easily see themselves in similar positions. Upon graduation she hopes to work either as a public children’s librarian or an academic librarian at a community college.

Najia Khan

Najia is a graduate student at Clarion University of Pennsylvania working towards her Master’s in Library and Information Science. As a children’s librarian, Najia is interested in building collections that speak for every child in the community. As a Pakistani American, she hopes to create a safe space in libraries where children from all backgrounds can be inspired by characters that represent their lives and their stories. Before beginning her graduate program, Najia worked closely with scholars and book enthusiasts, researching rare books at the Rosenbach Museum and Library in Philadelphia.  She also volunteered extensively in school libraries where she saw first hand the impact that representation in books can have on young children. 

Fall 2020

Kat Wyly

Kat is a MLIS graduate student at University of Washington. She currently provides reference services and information literacy instruction at Suzzallo and Allen Libraries as a Research and Learning Services Specialist. She co-chairs the UW organization iYouth and is a student representative on Washington Library Association’s Children and Young Adult Services steering committee. Prior to starting the MLIS program, Kat was an educator at an elementary school in Seattle where she grew her investment in diverse children’s literature. She is very interested in how libraries can serve as community driven centers for informal learning, especially in relation to youth services.

Halie Kerns

Halie is a graduate student in the LIS program at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. Her library-related interests include developing diverse collections and creating dynamic promotional materials. She is currently a library assistant at Windward Community College on O‘ahu, where she loves working with students to spread the joys of the library. Some of her past projects focused on sustainability through seed libraries, LGBTQ children’s literature, and collaborations between public and Native Hawaiian libraries. 

Summer 2020

Sanura Williams

Sanura is a Library and Information Science graduate student at San Jose State University. She 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 committed to highlighting the works of writers of color. Sanura is excited to join the Diverse BookFinder team as a Summer 2020 intern!

Karen Wang

Karen 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 is also a long-time children’s book volunteer at Housing Works Bookstore in New York City, and co-manages the website Kidsmomo.com for young readers ages 8-13.


Our Volunteers

Sophia Aronson

Sophi is a Brown University student from Maine interested in global health and immunology. She loves working with children, and believes that every child deserves to feel normal, beautiful, and empowered in their identity.

Growing up as the only black girl in school, it would have gone a long way to have been validated by books in the classroom, and not have had to personally do the work of educating my peers.

Sophi

Our Alumni

Christina Bell

Christina is a member of the library faculty at Glendale Community College in Arizona where she performs public service duties related to reference, instruction, and collection management. She joined the Diverse BookFinder in 2016 as a digital project consultant while serving as the Humanities Librarian at Bates College, helping to expand the physical collection of diverse books and to consider how users interact with the technology to find the books. Before becoming a librarian, Christina worked in human rights and is deeply committed to information access and equity. She earned her MLIS from Long Island University, MA in Humanities and Social Thought from New York University, and BA in History and Classics from the University of Arizona.

Lisa LeFeber ’19

Lisa graduated from Bates in 2019 with a BA in Psychology and minor in Math and Education. Through her studies and work with children, she has seen the positive impact picture books have not only on children’s cognitive development, but also on their social and emotional development.

I’m excited to be working with a project helping to increase awareness about representation, so that all children can receive the many benefits of picture books.

~Lisa
Ojochenemi Maji ’22

Chenemi is a Bates College student from Nigeria interested in Biotechnology and Geology. She has always been interested in children’s books and television.

I believe that education done right can be a positively empowering force.

~Chenemi

Stay in touch