![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Two posts in one!
Aug. 1st, 2010 02:15 pmI ordered for Ana two new chapter books with black protagonists - Nikki and Deja, and Keena Ford and the Second Grade Mix-up. And when they came, she fell all over them, just like she did with the Ruby Booker book. (I like these books better.)
Moral lesson here? Ana is desperate for chapter books, especially books with main characters on the cover who look like her. She showed more enthusiasm over these than she did over getting the new Clementine book that we were waiting for! (Clementine, a great series, has a serious dearth of non-white characters, btw. I think we finally have seen ONE black classmate in the illustrations. In the fourth book. They take place in Boston, a city which is almost 25% black. But you just can't limit yourself that much or there'd be nothing left to read, unfortunately.) I'm starting to think that this is the way to go, but bigger - make a whole damn listing of books, in categories, with a. non-white protagonists and, if possible, b. those same protagonists clearly shown on the cover, so you can see what they look like. (The first is good, the second is better. I'm entertaining the theory now that Gregor from the Underlander Chronicles might be black, after all, there's never (that I found) any clear description of him or his family that might contradict that, but there's also no clear picture of him on the cover ever either.)
So, once again, I'm asking people to reach out and bug their friends and recommend books to me (picture books or chapter books, I'm not picky!) that have black protagonists, or, really, any other non-white protagonists.
There's something else. I noticed while updating my librarything today that sometimes, the best books have the least reviews. (This goes whether or not the cast is "diverse"). People just don't know about them, I guess.
So, since I already posted this on P101, I figured I'll post it here too. If you can think of any really good book of yours, or your kid's, or your library's, that you have rarely or never seen recommended, anywhere - you can post about it. (Even if everybody in it is white, just tell us when you do so I know which sort of comment you're making, an obscure book comment or a diversity comment.)
( A few books to get us started )
Crossposted (more or less) to P101
Moral lesson here? Ana is desperate for chapter books, especially books with main characters on the cover who look like her. She showed more enthusiasm over these than she did over getting the new Clementine book that we were waiting for! (Clementine, a great series, has a serious dearth of non-white characters, btw. I think we finally have seen ONE black classmate in the illustrations. In the fourth book. They take place in Boston, a city which is almost 25% black. But you just can't limit yourself that much or there'd be nothing left to read, unfortunately.) I'm starting to think that this is the way to go, but bigger - make a whole damn listing of books, in categories, with a. non-white protagonists and, if possible, b. those same protagonists clearly shown on the cover, so you can see what they look like. (The first is good, the second is better. I'm entertaining the theory now that Gregor from the Underlander Chronicles might be black, after all, there's never (that I found) any clear description of him or his family that might contradict that, but there's also no clear picture of him on the cover ever either.)
So, once again, I'm asking people to reach out and bug their friends and recommend books to me (picture books or chapter books, I'm not picky!) that have black protagonists, or, really, any other non-white protagonists.
There's something else. I noticed while updating my librarything today that sometimes, the best books have the least reviews. (This goes whether or not the cast is "diverse"). People just don't know about them, I guess.
So, since I already posted this on P101, I figured I'll post it here too. If you can think of any really good book of yours, or your kid's, or your library's, that you have rarely or never seen recommended, anywhere - you can post about it. (Even if everybody in it is white, just tell us when you do so I know which sort of comment you're making, an obscure book comment or a diversity comment.)
( A few books to get us started )
Crossposted (more or less) to P101
