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Visual and Textual Analyses of Diverse Latino Subcultures in Americas Picture Books
On July 1, 2002, Latinos became the largest ethnic minority in the United States with 38.8 million residents identifying as Latino.1 More recent estimates indicate that 44.3 million U.S. residents identify as belonging to this cultural group.2 Nearly eight million Latino children are enrolled in U.S. nursery schools, kindergartens, and elementary schools.3 These children represent a heterogeneous group celebrating the diverse perspectives, origins, and subcultures from Mexico, Central America, South America, and the Caribbean.4
Edward James Olmos asserts, "Much like a quilt woven intricately with many beautiful fibers, Latinos are a proud and diverse people interwoven with indigenous, Spanish/European, African, and Asian roots. . . . [They] are citizens not only of the United States of America, but also of all the Americas and of the Latin American countries around the world."5 Often the U.S. media do not represent this multicolored tapestry of the Latino people. Instead, a "Latin look" of brown skin, dark hair and eyes, and a predilection for the Mexican subculture reigns through the images created by media that purport to represent the diversity of the Latino subcultures.
It is important for Latino children, as well as their non-Latino peers and educators, to encounter positive representations of the Latino subcultures in the books they read. According to the National Education Association, "Exposing Latino children to books that reflect their culture as well as their language is one of the most effective ways of motivating them to stay in school."6 In addition, providing such books improves the ethnic identity and self-esteem of children from the culture being represented and provides positive and accurate representations of the Latino culture that can be embraced by non-Latino children and educators. Unfortunately, most teaching materials and children's books about Latinos frequently stereotype them as a monolithic group rather than embracing the rich diversity of the Latino subcultures.
When compared to their strong presence in U.S. society, Latinos are significantly underrepresented in children's literature. Each year the Cooperative Children's Book Center (CCBC) compiles annual statistics of children's books published in the United States. According to the CCBC, of the approximately five thousand books published in the United States in 2006, an estimated 1.5 percent contained...