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This content analysis explores issues related to representations of diversity in classroom libraries, providing practical solutions for teachers seeking to diversify their classroom book collections.
THE WORLD DEPICTED in children's books is overwhelmingly White. It is also a world that is predominantly upper middle class, heterosexual, nondisabled, English-speaking, and male. In short, it may encompass many different worlds, but those worlds share familiar limitations: They are generally normative, limited in scope, and exclusionary of those who fall outside "mainstream" cultural identities. This is not to imply that exemplary books that challenge dominant discourses and normative representations do not exist; remarkable work has been done and is available for young readers. However, in 2016, this much we should be able to agree on: We need to do more-a great deal more. After all, for more than 75 years, librarians, scholars, critics, and creators of children's books have documented, described, and problematized the ongoing lack of diversity in children's literature (see, e.g., Crosby, 1963; Larrick, 1965; Rollins, 1967). Although others have attempted to dismiss, ignore, or justify these disparities, the existence of these issues is overwhelmingly well established and increasingly well documented in the realms of publishing and academic scholarship.
Since 1985, for example, the Cooperative Children's Book Center (CCBC) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has provided yearly statistics about children's books published by and/or about people who self-identify as members of various "parallel cultures" (a term coined by Hamilton, 1993, p. 363). In their latest report, Horning, Lindgren, Schliesman, and Townsend (2015) stated that across approximately 3,500 books published in 2014 that were received by the CCBC, only around 11% contained significant content, topics, characters, and/or themes about African or African American, American Indian, Asian/ Pacific or Asian/Pacific American, or Latino or Latino American people. According to the CCBC, the number of multicultural books has remained stagnant for more than 20 years (see, e.g., Horning, 2013). Other researchers have identified similar disparities across these and other cultural identities, including race, religion, socioeconomic status (SES) and class, gender, dis/abilities and developmental differences, and sexual identity (see, e.g., Blaska, 2004; Chaudhri & Teale, 2013; Crisp, 2015).
Recently, a large-scale survey of the publishing and reviewing industries provided much-needed baseline data that contribute to our overall understandings of...