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This critical content analysis of 116 award-winning English language picture storybooks explores depictions of families in order to identify and question dominant family models.
Although his white skin makes him one of the world's minorities, the light child learns from his books that he is the kingfish. There seems little chance of developing the humility so urgently needed for world cooperation, instead of world conflict, as long as our children are brought up on gentle doses of racism through their books. (Larrick, 1965, p. 63)
DESPITE BEING WRITTEN over half a century ago, Nancy Larrick's words endure because of an ongoing issue in children's literature: the subtleness of bias. Juxtaposing "gentle"-referring to the near-absence of children of color in these books-with blatantly racist publishers, Larrick contended that the mostly White content reflects a quiet persistence of racial bias in children's publishing despite successful progressive social movements like integration (Cummins, 2017). Larrick was not the first to question racism in children's literature. Librarians like Charlemae Hill Rollins, Augusta Baker, Pura Belpré, and Clara Breed championed diversity decades prior to Larrick's work (Horning, 2015, p. 7). Yet Larrick, in her platform as president of the American Library Association, "notified the American public" about racial bias (Sims, 1982, p. 2).
When I use Larrick's article with pre- and in-service teachers, my students consistently label this opening passage as resonating, disrupting, and awakening them to biased ideologies in children's literature. Today, conversations of underrepresentation and misrepresentation abound, including about race (Ishizuka & Stephens, 2019; C. Myers, 2014; W. D. Myers, 2014; Nel, 2017; Rodriguez & Kim, 2018; Thomas, Reese, & Horning, 2016) gender (Davies, 1989/2003; Marshall, 2004), and sexuality (Huskey, 2002; Riggs & Hanson-Easey, 2014; Ryan & Hermann-Wilmarth, 2013, 2018; Wickens, 2016), among other critical intersectional analyses of marginalized groups, such as S. R. Toliver's (2018) study on the embedded discourses of Black girls.
Representations of families must be considered in any diversity analysis to ensure all children are capable of seeing families as they appear in our communities. This extends beyond heterosexual two-parent families to include single-parent families, extended families, blended families, and other non-nuclear families. It includes analyzing families' race and ethnicity; their linguistic, socioeconomic, and cultural backgrounds; and the ways family members' abilities are portrayed....