A blog post by Tiffany Tse
Did you know that in 2018, only 10% or fewer books were written by or about African, Asian Pacific, Latinx, or First Nations people out of 3,134 children’s books? The statistics were compiled by the Cooperative Children’s Book Center, a team of librarians at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Education, who have been documenting books for children and teens since 1985.
Illustration by David Huyck, in consultation with Sarah Park Dahlen. Please see full citation in References below.
Children need books that reflect their identities and experiences to feel a sense of belonging, self-worth, confidence, and to imagine a greater potential for themselves. Currently, not only do some children see few representations of themselves, but these depictions are sometimes broken, fragmented, inaccurate, or unrelatable. More literature featuring characters with accurate portrayals of various ethnicities, religions, abilities, genders, family structures, and other aspects is essential to encourage children and build empathy for others.
Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop, a well-known researcher and educator in the field of American and multicultural children’s literature, uses the analogy of “Mirrors, Windows, and Sliding Glass Doors” to express the importance of diverse books:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AAu58SNSyc
Educators and librarians can support children by providing and promoting more diverse books with a greater range of experiences and authentic representations. One of the ways to do that is by accessing books written by authors who share the same marginalized identity as their character (also known as #OwnVoices) or collaborated with underrepresented individuals or groups to uplift their community.
Although #OwnVoices should not be the only criteria for selecting diverse books nor should it be used for invalidating or outing authors, there is great value in supporting authors who share their own identity and experience with their characters through storytelling. Our Diversify Your Classroom Library booklist features fiction and non-fiction books written by diverse authors with characters of varying ethnicities, abilities, gender identities, sexual orientations, and socioeconomic statuses, many of which were written in #OwnVoices. We also included teacher resources to supplement your learning and teaching.
This booklist can be found with our other booklists in the Instructional Planning section of our Education Library website. We hope this is helpful and our librarians would be happy to chat more about diverse books with you. Feel free to contact us at ed.lib@ubc.ca.
Further resources
We understand that #OwnVoices has become less favorable due to a push for authors and content creators to justify the representation they include in their work without safety precautions for the creators in mind. Our goal is to prioritize resources that are authored by people who belong to the communities and experiences they are writing about; within this context we utilize #OwnVoices as we stand by accurate, meaningful, and respectful representations.
Annotated Bibliography on Own Voices
References
Huyck, David and Sarah Park Dahlen. (2019 June 19). Diversity in Children’s Books 2018. sarahpark.com blog. Created in consultation with Edith Campbell, Molly Beth Griffin, K. T. Horning, Debbie Reese, Ebony Elizabeth Thomas, and Madeline Tyner, with statistics compiled by the Cooperative Children’s Book Center, School of Education, University of Wisconsin-Madison: https://ccbc.education.wisc.edu/literature-resources/ccbc-diversity-statistics/books-by-about-poc-fnn/. Retrieved from https://readingspark.wordpress.com/2019/06/19/picture-this-diversity-in-childrens-books-2018-infographic/