Content originally published on Literary Ashland and updated to it’s current form in in 2019.
“Imagine a world in which all children see themselves in the pages of a book”
-We Need Diverse Books
These are the first words you see when you arrive at diversebooks.org, the website of the We Need Diverse Books movement. This singular line of text captures the ethos of the book-based grassroots nonprofit. The aim of this organization is to bring fundamental change to the publishing industry by advocating for diversity in the pages of children’s literature.
Why is diversity important?
In 2014 an article published in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology called “The greatest magic of Harry Potter? Reducing prejudice” by Loris Vezzali et al. found that research showed extended contact via reading was a powerful strategy to improve attitudes toward out‐groups. As Scientific American noted of the study “Vezzali’s work supports earlier research suggesting that reading novels as a child — implying literary engagement with life’s social, cultural and psychological complexities — can have a positive impact on personality development and social skills of that child” (Stetka). In another book called “Battling Dragons: Issues and Controversy in Children’s Literature” author Judith Morley restates this sentiment “The cultures explored in certain books may be foreign to [some] children, but the common bonds of humanity are very evident. The human emotion of empathy and an awareness of diversity are fostered through careful reading and discussion of literature.” Research shows that reading about characters outside of the reader’s own race, religion, gender, or nationality positively contributed to their social development as they grew up. But while this is an important and encouraging finding, We Need Diverse Books was not created for the in-groups to grow as people, it was created for the representation of often overlooked social groups that could not find the same representation that their fellow classmates did in the majority of children’s literature.
In 1965 the former president of the International Reading Association, Nancy Larrick, published an article in the Saturday Review that opened with a poignant quote from a five-year-old African-American girl reading picture books at her local library. The girl asked, “Why are they always white children?” (Larrick). The ground-breaking article that followed was titled ‘The All-White World of Children’s Books’ and published findings that out of the 5,206 books published in a three-year period in the 60s, only 6.7% included an African-American character (Larrick). The representation was pretty bleak, these statistics counted the mere appearance of a black or brown face in a crowd as a character. Even books that did feature non-white characters were not contemporary portrayals of the lives they were meant to represent- often the only stories were subjects like biographies of Abraham Lincoln freeing slaves or just plainly offensive stereotypes.
A paper written by Rudine Sims Bishop at the Ohio State University beautifully articulates this message “Literature transforms human experience and reflects is back to us, and in that reflection, we can see our own lives and experiences as part of a larger human experience. Reading, then, becomes a means of self-affirmation, and readers often seek their mirrors in books” (Bishop). In the thematic notion of literature as a mirror, author Junot Diaz explains the alienating and dehumanizing effect of not being represented in the media you grow up with. “You know vampires have no reflections in a mirror?” Diaz says on a radio show, “There’s this idea that monsters don’t have reflections in a mirror. And I’ve always thought, if you want to make a human being into a monster, deny them, at the cultural level, any reflection of themselves.”
“Literature transforms human experience and reflects is back to us, and in that reflection, we can see our own lives and experiences as part of a larger human experience. Reading, then, becomes a means of self-affirmation, and readers often seek their mirrors in books”
-Rudine Sims Bishop
We Need Diverse Books has been creating opportunities for that type of reflection in an industry that has been historically very limited. Research shows that the publishing field has been lacking in representation from people of color, epically by people of color, since it’s inception. It is one thing to count a dark face in the back of a crowd as representation, it is another to have the voice of a person living through contemporary experiences telling their own story.
One of the ways WNDB does this is through the Walter Dean Myers Award for Outstanding Children’s Literature, affectionately abbreviated as the “The Walter.” This award celebrates the legacy of prolific children’s author Walter Dean Meyers, a life-long champion of diversity in children’s literature. “Myers served as the third National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature (2012-2013), authored over a hundred titles, and won countless awards, including two Newbery Honors, five Coretta Scott King Awards, the first-ever Michael L. Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature, and was a three-time National Book Award finalist” (WNDB). The Walter was first given in 2016 to “All American Boys” and has gone on to honor works such as “MARCH,” “The Sun is Also a Star,” “Monday is Not Coming,” and “The Astonishing Color of After.” All of these books meet the WNDB criteria of “diverse” which is defined as one or more of the following: a person of color, Native American, LGBTQIA, a person with a disability, and/or a member of a marginalized religious or cultural minority in the United States.
Before being published, the Walter Dean Meyers Grant is another resource provided by WNDB that helps to lift those diverse voices up. The mission is to “To honor and celebrate diverse books written by diverse authors” (WNDB). The best of example of how this grant creates boost diverse voices is through author Angela Thomas. Thomas received the grant in 2015 and used the money to purchase a computer to write her novel “The Hate U Give,” a young adult novel inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement and the cultural tensions leading up to it. The title itself comes from a Tupac Shakur quote in reference to the tattoo across his abdomen: “The Hate U Give Little Infants Fucks Everybody. T-H-U-G-L-I-F-E.” The novel is told from the perspective of a young African-American girl whose life is divided between the community she was raised in and the mostly upper class, mostly white, prep school she attends. The dichotomy of her life is thrown sharply into focus when her unarmed friend is fatally shot by a police officer, leaving her as the only witness to his death. The book became a New York Times bestseller list, win multiple literary awards, and went on to inspire a film adaptation.
Working from within the industry WNDB also has created an internship grant with the intention to “award supplemental grants to students from diverse backgrounds to help further their goals of pursuing a career in children’s publishing.” As of now, the program has awarded thirty-three grants, with twenty-two eligible interns having gone on to full-time work in the publishing industry (WNDB). The organization also pairs writers early in their career with experienced children’s book authors through mentorship programs. They have created a resource called OurStory that connects kids, teens, parents, and educators with diverse content and content creators from marginalized communities. WNDB bestows and annual Bookseller of the Year Award to recognize the role independent bookstores play in curating diverse collections and created a program of “Booktalking Kits” to provide other booksellers a framework to promote and sell diverse books (WNDB).
In their own right WNDB has their own publishing accomplishments, including three short story anthologies featuring diverse work written by award-winning and upcoming diverse voices: The Hero Next Door, Fresh Ink Thirteen, and Flying Lessons & Other Stories.
In the education field, WNDB had the mission to “To bring diverse books and authors into economically disadvantaged schools” (WNDB). WNDB in the Classroom was initially created to address the literacy gap that affects marginalized youth by providing free books and author visits to schools all around the country. “By helping children find stories and authors that they can relate to, we can help foster in them a lifelong love of reading” (WNDB). They have also partnered with the Scholastic Book Club to develop and distribute a list of diverse books to a national audience of young readers.
There are also educational programs for authors called WNDB Retreats. There are two different versions of this retreat. The first is the Writing Cross Culturally Retreat, which provides writers with “resources and tools for telling stories that are not their own with care, respect, and sensitivity” (WNDB). The second is a program called The OwnVoices Retreat that provides writers from marginalized backgrounds with resources to help them develop their manuscripts, learn about the industry, and gain the necessary tools to navigate the publishing industry” (WNDB).
As WNDB knows, it would be cruel to deny the kind of cultural reflection white, able-bodied, economically advantaged children experience to any other child that does not meet those specific standards. In the past, the publishing industry was guilty of omission. Biased cultural norms kept diverse voices out of the room, let alone the pages of children’s books. The benefits for diverse literature are not just applied to the underrepresented children looking for their own reflections in books (although that argument alone is pretty powerful), it also fosters emotional and social growth in others reading their story. Diverse books foster a cultural exchange in what YA author John Green may describe as “an ever-expanding exercise in empathy.” If all media sources, not just publishing companies, took into account the values and ideals that WNDB champions perhaps we would see a more accurate look at our world through the content we are delivered. This could lead to a more empathic, less divided world view for everyone. We are lucky live in a time where a group of authors can recognize this lack of diversity and representation in their communities, create a movement through a hashtag, and go on to establish an organization that fuels lasting and meaningful impacts on the lives of future generations. WNDB creates the cultural mirrors Junot Diaz and that five-year-old girl in her public library were searching for all those years ago. We live in a diverse world, the media and content we consume should reflect that diversity back, especially in the hands of children.
To put it simply: we need diverse books.
Bibliography
Alter, Alexandra (March 19, 2017). “New Crop of Young Adult Novels Explores Race and Police Brutality”. The New York Times. Archived from the original on March 21, 2017. Retrieved July 19, 2019.
Bishop, Rudine S. Mirrors Windows and Sliding Glass Doors. (2015, January 3). Reading Is Fundamental. Retrieved July 15, 2019, from https://scenicregional.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Mirrors-Windows-and-Sliding-Glass-Doors.pdf
“FanBrosShow Episode No. 30 – The Junot Diaz Episode.” SoundCloud. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 July. 2019.
Green, J. (2019, July 14). Author John Green: Reaching young adults and dealing with mental illness. Retrieved July 15, 2019, from https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-fault-in-our-stars-author-john-green-on-reaching-young-adults-and-dealing-with-mental-illness-60-minutes-2019-07-14/
Horning, K. T. (2019, July 5). Publishing Statistics on Children’s/YA Books about People of Color and First/Native Nations and by People of Color and First/Native Nations Authors and Illustrators. Retrieved July 19, 2019, from https://ccbc.education.wisc.edu/books/pcstats.asp
Larrik, N. (1965, September 11). The All-White World of Children’s Books. Saturday Review. Retrieved July 15, 2019.
Morely, J. (1995). Battling dragons: Issues and controversy in childrens literature. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Stetka, Bret. “Why Everyone Should Read Harry Potter.” Scientific American. N.p., 09 Sept. 2014. Web. 08 Dec. 2016.
Vezzali, L. , Stathi, S. , Giovannini, D. , Capozza, D. and Trifiletti, E. (2015), The greatest magic of Harry Potter: Reducing prejudice. J Appl Soc Psychol, 45: 105-121. doi:10.1111/jasp.12279
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