We Need More Diverse Books In Literature. More Voices Need To Be Represented.

We need more diverse books in literature. More voices need to be represented.

The Cooperative Children’s Book Center has released the results of their 2019 survey on diversity in kidlit/YA.

We thank them for this invaluable work, note their commitment to adding Arabs/Arab Americans in future surveys, and present these graphs of their findings.

The 3,716 books surveyed have this many main characters total for the following groups:

Black/African: 11.9%

First/Native Nations: 1%

Asian/Asian American: 8.7%

Latinx: 5.3%

Pacific Islander: 0.05%

White: 41.8%

Animal/Other: 29.2%

LGBTQIAP+: 3.1%

Disability: 3.4%

“Taken together, books about white children, talking bears, trucks, monsters, potatoes, etc. represent nearly three quarters (71%) of children’s and young adult books published in 2019.” - librarian Madeline Tyner

When we looked at the breakdown for IPOC creatives who wrote and/or illustrated stories with characters of their own race, we found the following:

First/Native Nations: 68.2%

Pacific Islander: 80%

Latinx: 95.7%

Asian/Asian American: 100%*

*NOTE: these percentages include both authors and illustrators and, as pointed out by author Linda Sue Park for past surveys, Asians/Asian Americans are frequently illustrators but not necessarily authors of their own stories, meaning this is not fully reflective of #OwnVoices representation.

Black/African creatives wrote and/or illustrated only 46.4% of stories featuring Black/African characters.

This is the work that still needs to be done.

What to Read When You've Run Out of Reading Material

for the reader who just can't get enough.

Books in your bookshelf. Rereading is like greeting former friends. It means re-entering familiar worlds and receiving warm "welcome home" greetings from your favorite characters.

Poetry. From Edgar Allan Poe to Lang Leav, some poems are as short as five words, others take 1.8 million words. Reading poetry can enhance your language and cognitive skills, open your mind and stimulate your imagination, and make you more aware of the world and the people around you. Here's a compilation of free online poetry sites you can visit.

A topic you're interested in. Ever wondered how the government of Zimbabwe works? The Internet is home to everything you may be wondering about and longing to know. Take time to research and immerse yourself. You'll be armed with trivia that you can bring up in conversations. Stuck? Try experimenting with these weird-but-wonderful topics.

Discarded newspapers, magazines, pamphlets, etc. Besides using them as cat litter box liners and placemats, there's a lot of usefulness in reading them. You can find how-to articles, political opinions, and one-line comic strips. Maybe there's hidden treasure in their text.

Text from cereal boxes and other food containers. Want to know how much calories you consume from your Mars bar? Check the back of its packaging. Before long, you'll learn about terms like monounsaturated fatty acids and disodium guanylate. You are what you eat.

Your old writings. Take a trip down memory lane. It can be your third grade homework, confession letters to your middle school crush, or a story about dragons you made up when you were six. You'll notice how much you've grown as a reader and a writer.

Something from your book list. Your list consists of the books you want to read. These may be recommendations from your friends or interesting books you've seen online. Now's the time to tackle the books on your list. Haven't started on your book list? Take a look at these books!

Similar books from the ones you've previously read. Perhaps your favorite author wrote other books than the ones you've already read. Or maybe you want to keep reading about dystopian communities. Either way, the literary world is interconnected with millions of books for you to read.

Encyclopedias and dictionaries. These were invented for you to read them. Long before Google and other browsing sites existed, your ancestors looked up information from these thick, dusty hardcovers. Time to brush up on your knowledge, buddy.

Your last resort. This is the topic of your nightmares; something that you find boring or useless. You would never, ever dream of reading about this. But with your boredom and desperation to read something, you might find these topics interesting. Learning about the migration patterns of redwings could be useful someday.

Trivia Tuesday #2

After finishing a book, I kiss its front page and sob quietly. I hold it tight and cradle it like a baby. It's my farewell ritual. Afterwards, I don't know if I can find another book that can satisfy the last one I've just read.

do you have any wlw books that star women of colour?

i do!

girls of paper and fire by natasha ngan

girl serpent thorn by melissa bashardoust

take a hint, dani brown by talia hibbert

the bone shard daughter by andrea stewart

the space between worlds by micaiah johnson

the true queen by zen cho

empress of forever by max gladstone

falling into place by sheryn munir

waiting on a bright moon by jy yang

the avant-guards by carly usdin & noah hayes

that could be enough by alyssa cole

abbott by saladin ahmed

a dead djinn in cairo by p djeli clark

the stars and the blackness between them by junauda petrus

the henna wars by adiba jaigirdar

you should see me in a crown by leah johnson

burning roses by s l huang

yellow rose by yoshiya nobuko

don’t date rosa santos by nina moreno

clap when you land by elizabeth acevedo

shatter the sky by rebecca kim wells

the good luck girls by charlotte nicole davis

in the vanishers’ palace by aliette de bodard

once ghosted, twice shy by alyssa cole

afterlove by tanya byrne

buuza!! by shazleen khan

motor crush by brenden fletcher

not for use in navigation by iona datt sharma

ninefox gambit by yoon ha lee

a blade so black by l l mckinney

mangos and mistletoe by adrianna herrera

patsy by nicole dennis benn

escaping exodus by nicky drayden

we set the dark on fire by tehlor kay mejia

the weight of the stars by k ancrum

"Take your reading material with you everywhere you go and think of it as a treasure and a lifeline."

𝗙𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗧𝗶𝗽𝘀 𝗼𝗻 𝗛𝗼𝘄 𝘁𝗼 𝗠𝗮𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗮𝗶𝗻 𝗙𝗼𝗰𝘂𝘀 𝗪𝗵𝗶𝗹𝗲 𝗥𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴💡

There are plenty of ways to maintain focus while we are reading, but here are my top five. I would love to know yours too! Feel free to share them. 📝

Trivia Tuesday #3

Bookworm vocabulary: Abibliophobia is the fear of running out of reading material. Bibliosmia is the love of the smell of old books. Tsundoku (Japanese) means to let reading materials pile up in one's home and never read them.