There has been a lot of attention recently being paid to the issue of diversity in children’s and young adult books. Here are links to some of the many posts and articles responding to this:
- The We Need Diverse Books Campaign. This took place over three days last week, but it is still going strong. Check out the #weneeddiversebooks tweets and the weneeddiversebookstumblr to see the incredible range of responses.
- SLJ’s dedicated Diversity Issue. Articles include “Children’s Books. Still an All-White World?,” “The Publishing Perspective on Diversity,” and “Culturally Diverse Books Selected by SLJs Review Editors.” (The last generated a lot of comments which are well worth reading.)
- Salon’s “WeNeedDiverseBooks Goes Viral.”
- The UK Guardian also took note: “‘We Need Diverse Book’ calls for more representative writing for children.“
- Parade interviewed one of the campaign’s leaders, Ellen Oh.
- The LA Times also took note.
- Much of the recent advocacy was in response to the recent announcement of an all white male panel of authors for BookCon, BEA’s Consumer day. More about that and the attempt to rectify it here.
educating alice 