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This essay reviews the landscape of diversity in children's literature one year after NCTE's Resolution on the Need for Diverse Children's and Young Adult Books.
In February 2015, NCTE members approved a Resolution on the Need for Diverse Children's and Young Adult Books. The official background statement about this resolution reads as follows:
In the world of literature for young people, the kinds of print and digital texts that are accessible to youth are determined and authorized by influential individuals and professional organizations: editors/publishers, agents, authors/book creators, illustrators, distributors, booksellers, librarians, educators, parents, and the media. The absence of human, cultural, linguistic, and family diversity in children's and young adult literature attests to the growing disparity and inequity in the publishing history in the United States. Stories matter. Lived experiences across human cultures including realities about appearance, behavior, economic circumstance, gender, national origin, social class, spiritual belief, weight, life, and thought matter. (NCTE, 2015)
Although stories matter (Fox & Short, 2003), not all stories are equally present in today's literary landscape. Over the past decade, much has been made of the persistence of racial and ethnic achievement gaps in literacy and educational attainment. These conversations have extended from classrooms and communities to the White House, prompting inquiry about other gaps, such as in empathy, opportunities, resources, and technology (Irvine, 2003; Ladson- Billings, 2006; Milner, 2013). Building on their work, I have begun to theorize a corresponding imagination gap in children's literature and media (Thomas, 2014). This imagination gap is caused in part by the lack of diversity in childhood and teen life depicted in children's books and media. When children grow up without seeing diverse images in the mirrors, windows, and doors of children's literature (Bishop, 1990), it limits them to single stories about the world around them (Adichie, 2009) and ultimately affects the development of their imaginations.
Conversations about diversity in children's literature are not new. New York Times op- eds written by the late pioneering Black children's author Walter Dean Myers and his son Christopher Myers in the spring of 2014 were among the latest developments in decades- long struggles over disparities in children's publishing and media (C. Myers, 2014; W. D. Myers, 2014). Their powerful essays, "Where Are the People of...