Special Challenges

Approximately 74% of children’s media features white main characters and 12% feature animals, trucks, etc, leaving less than 14% of literature that features main characters as people of color while the reflective representation should be at least 30% of media (reflection press).

Most of the small population of children’s literature that is actually about children of color or diverse cultural backgrounds who deal with race, teach equality by pointing out race, or teach about cultural differences in reference to holidays or civil rights leaders and activists of the past. Another important detail to consider that would be the next step in this research guide would be to weed out the materials representing people of color that are not written or created by their representative cultures. This research guide attempts to include books that represent children and people of color in everyday situations that are not strictly related to race, but those of universal experiences to childhood in all cultures.

What was attempted here was to find books about children of different racial backgrounds that depicted kids for significant skills, imagination, or hardships they face and flourish in spite of these challenges; all of which are not directly about race. Some of the choices made were about economic background, talent, adventure, and language differences, and family living in different parts of the world. These are not unique to a particular culture or race, but feature powerful kids or people of different racial backgrounds. The line that is drawn for this research guide can seem a little odd since it excludes a great many books that represent children of different backgrounds however; as a person who takes care of lots of different kids from lots of different backgrounds its sometimes hard to find them books not about civil rights, suffering, activism, etc and simply hand them fantasy books or books about kids experiences with protagonists that look like them. While doing the research it was hard to find these media representations and then to determine what books seemed like they were written to represent experience rather than teach tolerance.

Process and Formatting Choices

I started my search through the King Library at SJSU. I chose the Library and Information Science Source database. From there I made a specific search that resulted in very little and slowly expanded until I got enough results to actually run the results through my criteria. Following my search of the King Library Database I turned to Google, which led to many significant free materials and news on the subject. Some of the reference sources I found through basic Google searches were extremely useful in locating other similar research guides on similar subjects. I then visited my local library Westchester Loyola Village Los Angeles Public Library to locate films and books to include that met my criteria. I also turned to store websites like Target and Barnes & Noble in order to locate diverse materials, but there were not useful search filters in order to do this well. However; the site many depend on for materials: Amazon, was the most successful in its list when searching diverse kids books, but the results were heavily in favor of African Americans with almost no results for any other racial representation.  I ran this process three times over time to make sure I hadn’t missed anything and the repetition yielded different results that proved useful to the formation of the guide.

Formating for my Reserach Guide:

I chose to do a WordPress blog format since I most comfortable with this website and formatting. I have used LibGuides before and although I like the uses I like to be able to customize and edit more than it allows.

Audience

The intended audience of the Library Research Guide: Diverse Representation in Children’s Media are primarily librarians and parents providing materials to children. The secondary audience would be library students and college students studying Chicano, African American, Asian studies or taking similar courses on the subject matter of diversity. This guide may also serve as a supplementary starting point for research on the psychological effects of representation since the research resources are primarily arguments and studies that argue the importance of these materials. It also serves as an overview of what is available in terms of POC characters in children’s media for the application of children’s literature studies for students in elementary teaching programs.

Parents

Library Students

Librarians

Chicano and African American studies

Women’s studies

Children’s literature studies

Psychology of represenation

Scope

This Library Guide is focused on the research needs of parents, MLIS students, and librarians searching for and studying diverse representation in children’s literature, and/or studies on diversity of authors, POC characters in children’s books.

This subject matter is often very important to families and to students taking or interested in taking courses related to librarianship in the children’s department. This Library Guide would be useful in diversity and children’s literature studies. It is easy to become overwhelmed by the lack of representation in children’s literature or only finding representation in children’s books that teach people about cultures or holidays unique to particular parts of the world.

The psychological effects of representation or lack there of is important to families and children in helping their children to be well adjusted, to love reading, and to love learning. The resources included in this guide will show the audience where to start looking for the materials that will have these effects on their children. The books and films, and research should show children’s experiences outside of cultural significance, show them that their every day life is represented, and argue the importance of representation and expose the current state of imbalanced representation in children’s books. In order to accommodate those searching for materials like this I created this Library Research Guide: Diverse Representation in Children’s Media.

The following list is a breakdown of the categories within the Library Research Guide:

  1. Books
  2. Journal Databases & Articles
  3. Reference Sources
  4. News Sources
  5. Videos: Film and TV Adaptations
  6. Free Online Resources