Well, back in 1965 Nancy Larrick wrote a piece called “The All-White World of Children’s Books.” And 50 years later we have changed. There’s been some change, and there’s been some of the more things change, the more they remain the same. Nancy Larrick was focused on African Americans in children’s books. Negros was her term at the time. It was the proper term at the time.
It was 1965 and that was the natural focus. It was 11 years after Brown versus the Board of Education. So, there was all this business about school integration. It was the year — let me see, it was 10 years after Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus. It was two years after the March on Washington.
So, there was a lot of focus on what was happening with African Americans. And her point was you can’t simply integrate the schools or desegregate by having children from African American neighborhoods go to school with white children. You really have to integrate the curriculum, and that means you have to have books that include all of these children.
So, 50 years later one of the things that’s happened is that there are a lot more books. She looked at five thousand two hundred some-odd books that had been published in the three years, 1962, ‘63, ‘64. Nowadays the estimate is that you get that many in any one year.
She found about 350, 349 out of those 5,000 books included as she would have said even one negro in the text or the illustrations. That was about an average of 6, 6.7 percent. Today there are a great deal more, but still not as many as there needs to be.
We have probably around 10 percent there seems to be. And that 10 percent is across a number of cultural groups. The council — the Cooperative Center for Children’s Books out of Wisconsin does a count of books by and about African Americans, Latinos, Asians, and the Asian-Pacific Americans American Indians.
And across those four groups you get about 10 percent of the 5,000 books. There seems to be that ceiling. So, one of the things that’s changed is of course there are a great deal more. Another thing on the positive side is that there is a greater diversity certainly. I started by saying that Larrick was looking at African Americans, but today we are looking at not only those four groups but other marginalized groups and concerned about including those groups within this diversity umbrella — under this diversity umbrella as well. So, some good changes but we still need some more.
