#1000BlackGirlBooks
from JSTOR Daily
#1000BlackGirlBooks and the Importance of Diversity in Children’s Literature
Recently book-Twitter was gloriously taken over by the hashtag #1000blackgirlbooks, due to the diligence of a remarkable 11-year old named Marley Dias. Tired of her 6th grade curriculum full of “books about white boys and their dogs,” Dias decided to start a book drive to collect books featuring protagonists she could look up to-in her words, “strong, black girls!”
The books will be donated at a book festival on February 13th, to a library in an impoverished area of Jamaica, where Dias’s mother, founder of GrassROOTS Community Foundation, is from.Marley’s drive will not only help her and her friends find some inspiring reading material; it has also sparked a much-needed conversation about diversity in children’s publishing.
The Cooperative Children’s Book Center at the University of Wisconsin - Madison found that of the children’s literature published in 2014, only 11 percent of the books were about characters of color. It’s not surprising, given what Lee & Low Books found in [a] new survey, that the publishing industry is 79 percent white. As Marley put it, “Diversity is [more than] just having one book where a black character is a slave.”
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#1000BlackGirlBooks and the Importance of Diversity in Children’s Literature
Recently book-Twitter was gloriously taken over by the hashtag #1000blackgirlbooks, due to the diligence of a remarkable 11-year old named Marley Dias. Tired of her 6th grade curriculum full of “books about white boys and their dogs,” Dias decided to start a book drive to collect books featuring protagonists she could look up to-in her words, “strong, black girls!”
The books will be donated at a book festival on February 13th, to a library in an impoverished area of Jamaica, where Dias’s mother, founder of GrassROOTS Community Foundation, is from.Marley’s drive will not only help her and her friends find some inspiring reading material; it has also sparked a much-needed conversation about diversity in children’s publishing.
The Cooperative Children’s Book Center at the University of Wisconsin - Madison found that of the children’s literature published in 2014, only 11 percent of the books were about characters of color. It’s not surprising, given what Lee & Low Books found in [a] new survey, that the publishing industry is 79 percent white. As Marley put it, “Diversity is [more than] just having one book where a black character is a slave.”
This entry was originally posted at http://thnidu.dreamwidth.org/1483229.html. You can comment here, or there using OpenID or your Dreamwidth ID.
comments there so far.