My daughter, 5 years old, is venturing into early chapter books and I, of course, am scouring the shelves for any and all BIPOC representation to balance steady and unconscious diet of white supremacy. And let me tell you - it is hard. I mean, I figured it might be, knowing the things that I know, but I also thought we had made enough gains in the publishing industries in the past few years that maybe, just maybe, it would be a little easier. For those who aren't familiar with just how biased the publishing industry has been towards BIPOC authors and stories, just take a little gander at the stats below. TLDR: our choices as parents are predominately books about white kids or about talking animals and trucks.
My daughter is particularly into fairies and princesses - and did you know that fairies and princesses mostly just come in the white variety?! She has been very drawn to the Rainbow Magic series. I make a point to take out the ones from the library that feature "fairies of colour" - but their skin pigment is only darker on the cover - the illustrations inside the book show them all as white. This DRIVES ME CRAZY - it truly feels like a bait and switch situation. Can the publisher really not spare a few more cents at the printers to add some melanin to those few minority fairies?!
In case it is just our public libraries' shelves that are biased, I head over to the bookstore to see if the latest offerings may be more diverse, but what I find are shelves and shelves of Bad Guys (anthropomorphic wolf and co.), Dragon Masters, Dragon Girls, Owl Diaries, Unicorn Diaries, Diary of a Pug - you get the idea. Series featuring people included Moody Judy, Ivy & Bean, Amelia Bedelia, Magic Tree House , Princess in Black (don't be fooled, she is white), and of course, Magic Rainbow Fairies.
More diversity seems to be found a bit past the early reader stage, once you get into more dense chapter books/singular stories (as opposed to series), but my daughter is currently in the stage of wanting a simple formulaic series. The thing is, WE NEED RACIAL DIVERSITY AT EVERY STAGE. There is no doubt in my mind that my kids, ages 5 and 2, have already formed racial biases in favour of white people or white characters over characters of colour. It's in the air they breathe every day, with every book, every show, every neighbour to whom they interact. My work, as a mother of racialized children is to continuously fight against the current and hope that my kids grow up with a sense of racial awareness and justice.
My daughter was with me in the bookstore, and we kept looking at different covers together. She asked me what I was looking for, and I decided to be honest with her. The conversation went like this:
Me: I am looking for books that have characters with darker skin colours, like you and I have. Have you noticed that almost all these books on this shelf are stories about kids with white skin? It's very important to me that we read stories and see pictures of kids with all skin colours, and not only white all the time.
My daughter: Like Tiana [from Disney's The Princess and the Frog]?
Me: Yes, exactly.
My daughter: Yeah, I really like Tiana and she has darker skin.
Ok, so it wasn't a groundbreaking conversation. But I want her to know and remember that these things are important, and for her to start developing some of her own criteria when choosing books to read. I like to think I'm planting seeds of awareness and self-advocacy.
One recent win was found in an Itty Bitty Princess Kitty book. It had a black fairy! And not just on the cover, either! She was shaded darker on the inside pages too, score! Not cool that she's called the "un-fairy" but it's actually a decent story where she finds her place.
I've also done my own research and have found some series that do feature BIPOC characters - but I'm putting it lightly when I say that I AM SO TIRED of having to RESEARCH and SOURCE MY OWN BOOKS in order to fight the natural racist bias we're being fed. Why can I not go into a bookstore and just find books that represents my kids? Wouldn't that just be dreamy? Well, millions and millions do live that dream but I'm not one of them. Unlucky me. Before I just drown in this little self-pity puddle, here are some cool series I've come across:
As you can see, no fairies or princesses in sight, but I'll keep searching. If you know of any, drop me a line!
I want to give a special shout-out to my sister-in-law on this topic because she recently found a few Beginning-to-Read books for my daughter that featured Viola Desmond and Misty Copeland. They were huge hits and gave us two new Black female role models in the house. Thank you for caring about my passion of creating a racially diverse library and fighting the bias!
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