I think African American children’s literature is both changing and maintaining or I think it’s a matter of continuity and change. As I said, there are a number of thematic threads that have woven through African American children’s literature, this affirmation of children, the importance of family as a bedrock of support and love and not just mother, father, siblings, but extended family, grandparents, the importance of elders in the family.
The importance of history, children knowing their history because the impression is, of course, that they’re not going to get it in the schools. And so literature is one of the ways of knowing. And so they tell stories out of that, stories of black people’s achievements. And I think that will continue for the most part.
At the same time, I think the literature will follow some of the trends that children’s literature in general will follow. There will be the focus on, say, graphic novel/comic book format, the focus on the visual, the playing with forms. Jackie Woodson doing her memoir in free verse, those kinds of things.
And so I think the scope will expand, will perhaps get away from — not away from but add to the whole focus on sort of self-conscious sense of, you know, pride in our own heritage and who we are and tell our stories just as stories. And I’m hoping that we’ll just have more folks as well.
