ENG578: Children's Literature: Diversity in Children's Literature

Early Risers is a podcast from Little Moments Count and Minnesota Public Radio with frank facts, engaging stories and real how-tos for anyone who cares about raising children with a clear-eyed understanding of cultural differences, race and implicit bias.

The Diverse BookFinder is a collection of thousands of children's picture books featuring Black and Indigenous people and People of Color (BIPOC), published and distributed in the U.S. since 2002. We offer a searchable database and a source of real-time data about who is in the books and how they are depicted.

We Need Diverse Books™ is a 501(c)(3) non-profit and a grassroots organization of children’s book lovers that advocates essential changes in the publishing industry to produce and promote literature that reflects and honors the lives of all young people.

The Cooperative Children's Book Center provides statistics on diversity in children's books, a diversity book search, booklists, and other resources.
"The CCBC has been documenting books for children and teens it receives annually by and about Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) since 1994. Before that, between 1985 and 1993, we documented books by and about Blacks only.
Beginning in 2018, we began to document the content of every book we receive. Also in 2018, we began to document additional aspects of identity in our analysis, including disability, LGBTQ+, and religion."

Association of Jewish Libraries
Focus: books that authentically portray the Jewish experience.

We Need Diverse Books Focus: books that best exemplify Myers’s commitment to providing children with powerful mirrors and windows.

In this 2015 interview, Rudine Sims Bishop talks about how we need diverse books because we need books in which children can see reflections of themselves – but also look through and see other worlds.

By Rudine Sims Bishop, The Ohio State University. "Mirrors, Windows, and Sliding Glass Doors" originally appeared in Perspectives: Choosing and Using Books for the Classroom. Vo. 6, no. 3. Summer 1990.

The work of Bryan Collier, an author and children’s book illustrator was featured at the NCCU Art Museum as part of the museum’s spring exhibition for the 2019-2020 season.
The exhibit, titled “You Can’t Outgrow a Picture Book,” includes over 39 original works by Collier, which feature an array of color, shapes and patterns with watercolors and collages. Through the use of fabrics, textures and tones, Collier tells stories of many salient moments in black history and everyday life.

Recording of March 12, 2021 virtual symposium. Co-hosted by the Library of Congress and We Need Diverse Books, the symposium focused on "how diversity in children's books helps us better understand each other, resulting in a stronger sense of community."