Diverse Children’s Literature: The Benefits and the Challenges 1
Diverse Children’s Literature: The Benefits and the Challenges
Elizabeth Stefanski
Post University
Diverse Children’s Literature: The Benefits and the Challenges 2
Diversity in children’s literature is key to creating a welcoming, inclusive, multicultural
education. Children learn to read in their very first years of school, and books play a huge role in
their day to day instruction. After learning to read, students read to learn. Because literature
plays such a large role in education, it can be a detriment or an asset. Diverse literature opens a
world of opportunities and benefits for a student’s education.
Diverse children’s literature connects to the objectives in EDU 604 because it relates to
multicultural education. Diverse literature can be a means of representation and exposure to other
cultures for students. Additionally, responsive teaching practices must take literature into
account, as it is the basis of much of the information and content that is being taught in schools.
Experts in diverse children’s literature vouch for its benefits; anti racism and
multicultural education. Books play a huge role in children’s literary lives, and they can be an
agent for anti-racist pedagogy (Spencer, 2022). Over 85 percent of children’s books feature white
characters. Because of this, teachers must be mindful of the books they read and select for their
class. Literature is a way students connect with their learning, and it is a sad fact that so many
demographics are underrepresented in children’s literature. However, it is not simply choosing
diverse texts; it is also teaching about anti-racism and cultures that makes a classroom rich in
anti-bias pedagogy (Spencer, 2022).
One way teacher’s can be a champion for selecting anti-racist texts is by first becoming
aware of cultures and educating themselves. In a recent study, teachers who visited a holocaust
museum felt more fit to teach the content and understand the literature and not omit any
information due to lack of understanding (Gunn, 2016). Teachers may feel unfit to use diverse
children’s literature because they are not educated about different cultures or controversial topics.
School districts need to provide and support their teachers with learning opportunities to help
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them feel prepared to teach with such literature. For example, after visiting the museum, the
teachers considered the literature as a helpful tool to drive their social justice instruction. In turn,
the students critically thought about what they were learning, and what types of people still need
to be represented in their curriculum (Gunn, 2016). Additionally, the elimination of children’s
literature courses for education majors has resulted in limited knowledge on cultural diversity
when selecting texts (Graff, 2022). Embedding this into other reading language arts courses
yields a shallow understanding for pre-service teachers.
In 2014, the We Need Diverse Books campaign began (Mabbot, 2017). One mission of
this campaign is to vouch for Rudine Bishop’s idea of books being mirrors, windows and sliding
glass doors (Mabbot, 2017). A book is a mirror when the reader can see themselves and identify
with a character in the book. A window book lets a reader see into another type of life or culture.
Lastly, a sliding glass door book lets readers enter a new world or reality. All purposes are
important for every reader, but unfortunately, for minorities, there are limited mirror books, and
for the white students, there are limited window and sliding glass door books; this only furthers
the barriers to multicultural education because we need multicultural books to do so. One
shocking statistic from 2019 is that out of 3,716 children's books surveyed, 1% had a indigenous
main character, .05% had a pacific islander main character, and 5% had a latinx main character
(Herndon, 2019). Even more shocking, is the categories that make up the majority of books;
“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.”
(Herndon, 2019). Unfortunately, there are more bear characters than indigenous characters, for
example. It seems that the diverse book opportunities are contrasting the hopes for multicultural,
inclusive education. A student who cannot find a book in which they identify with the main
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character may cause them to resent literature. The education system needs enthusiastic readers,
and students who see the value in books, however, the lack of diverse characters will not help
with this goal. There are countless reasons these statistics need to drastically change.
Diverse children’s literature is certainly a contested topic. Many conservative areas vouch
for book bans or censorship, making it harder for multiple perspectives and cultures to be
represented in schools. With book bans, it mainly consists of controversial topics like sexuality,
race issues, and LGBTQ+ topics (O’Leary, 2022). The positive side of this would only be
regarded as a benefit if one is looking to promote a political or moral agenda, or limit student’s
exposure to certain topics. For those who feel like literature can groom their child into a certain
belief or life, diverse children's literature is certainly a negative thing. The con of book bans and
limiting diversity in the literature in schools is that students do not have this exposure, and are
limited in their ability to look at life and scenarios from a variety of perspectives, and learn about
different cultures.
Book bans are a barrier for diverse children’s literature in schools. Book challenges
(attempts to ban) are rising significantly; from an average to about 300 a year, to 729 in 2021
(O’Leary, 2022). Even when an individual parent vouches for censorship regarding a text being
used in their child’s classroom or school, oftentimes it influences the teacher to not use the
resource altogether; giving this parent the power to omit information from not just their child, but
a whole class (Gopalakrishnan, 2011). Because of this, single students are not impacted by
challenges, making the impact of the censorship much greater. Censorship and banning happens
for a plethora of reasons, often with the mindset that what is in a book equates to what will
become of one’s reality, which is not true. For example, a parent or administrator may think, if
they have a book with a LBGTQ+ character in their library, people will read it and in turn,
Diverse Children’s Literature: The Benefits and the Challenges 5
change their sexual preferences. People who may fear this will challenge books used in schools;
popular YA author Judy Blume agrees (Baker, 2015). However, when we think about books as
windows, mirrors, and sliding glass doors, we are reminded that texts are not here to always
mimic our world, but rather, inform us of other scenarios as well. For example, the same book
Blume wrote was banned in Maryland for lack of ‘moral tone’ and because poor behavior is not
punished in its events, is used in New Zealand to help train teachers on classroom dynamics
(Baker, 2015).
A potential upside of censorship is something called ‘trigger warnings’, or providing a
disclaimer that something you may read is related to topics that can cause anxiety, ptsd, etc. For
example, a scene in a book that depicts sexual harassment may be triggering for a reader who
went through something similar. Blume disagrees with this idea, stating, “Why do college
students need to be warned that what they are about to read might make them feel bad? These are
20-year-olds, but they need a professor to warn them?” (Baker, 2015). Book-freedom activists
like Blume vouch for the fact we learn from books, with good and bad characters, scenarios, and
with controversial topics that are part of life. A paradox forms in the censorship world, where
some conservative book-banners want certain texts off the shelves, but trigger warnings are just
for the unresilient and weak. Book-freedom activists aim for all literature to be read, with no
limits or censorship; but in turn, may be negatively impacting readers who suffer from anxiety or
depression due to certain topics.
Book bans, the lack of teacher education, and the slim variety of diverse characters in
children's literature are all issues in today’s education. These issues are directly impacting how
students feel towards literature, and the worldview they develop from reading. Once students
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read, they then read to learn, and without diverse books, students will have limited multicultural
knowledge.
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References
Baker, V. (2015). Battle of the bans: US author Judy Blume interviewed about trigger warnings,
book bannings and children’s literature today. Index on Censorship, 44(3), 64-66.
Ambika Gopalakrishnan. (2011). Multicultural Children’s Literature : A Critical Issues
Approach. SAGE Publications, Inc.
Graff, J., Liang, L. A., Martinez, M. G., McClure, A., & Day, D. (2022). Contemporary
Children’s Literature in Education Courses: Diverse, Complex, and Critical. Literacy
Practice & Research, 47(3), 1–19.
Gunn, A. A. (2016). Teachers Moving Forward on a Cultural Self-Awareness Spectrum: Diverse
Children, Museums, and Young Adult Literature. Multicultural Perspectives, 18(4),
214–220. [Link]
Herndon, J. (2020, June 26). Report: 2019 diversity in children's and ya literature. BOOK RIOT.
Retrieved February 17, 2023, from
[Link]
Mabbott, C. (2017). The we need diverse books campaign and critical race theory: Charlemae
Rollins and the call for diverse children's books. Library Trends, 65(4), 508-522.
O’LEARY, M. (2022). Book Ban Watchdogs Track Troubling Trends. Information Today, 39(8),
28–29.
Spencer, T. (2022). Using Children’s Literature to Advance Antiracist Early Childhood Teaching
and Learning. Issues in Teacher Education, 31(2), 9–31.
