This is not about skin color, but good to see a character in a wheelchair where it’s a not a Huge Issue or Huge Plot Point. The Lulu books, though these are chapter books. Jonathan Bean’s Big Snow: (and, of course, The Snowy Day). Lots of “casual diversity” in this beautiful new book: (okay, that’s actually from THIS year).
Also, I can’t help it my instincts are to go to my site and click through the last year, so I’m just going to paste links here.
Here are some recent ones, and I do NOT mean to be all blog-pushy by including links here, but there’s art in these links (always fun to see).
Mini Mia and Her Darling Uncle by Pija Lindenbaum.Big red lollipop by Rukhsana Khan illustrated by Sophie Blackall.The chicken-chasing queen of Lamar County by Janice N.Jimmy the greatest! by Jairo Buitrago pictures by Rafael Yockteng.Oh no!, or, How my science project destroyed the world by Mac Barnett illustrated by Dan Santat.Nino wrestles the world by Yuyi Morales.Maria had a little llama = María tenía una llamita by Angela Dominguez.Mommy, mama, and me by Leslea Newman illustrated by Carol Thompson.Daddy, Papa, and Me by Leslea Newman illustrated by Carol Thompson.Here’s what I came up with off the top of my head: I think they exist for the older readers, but not so much with picture books unless they’re part of group shots. The hardest thing to find? Casual diversity involving handicapped characters. Put another way, these are books where the point of the story isn’t diversity, but just a natural outgrowth of it. We’re just looking for books where diversity is integrated into the storyline without a hitch. I worked up a short list but I’d love it if other folks could offer up suggestions of their own. Since this particular group of moms was looking for younger titles I had to wrack my brain to come up with ideas. It’s something we strive to find in a lot of our books for kids, but actively seeking it out isn’t as easy as it sounds. The phrase is typically used to describe pop culture but I think it applies well enough to children’s books. To illustrate her point she called this “casual diversity”, a term I’d hitherto been unfamiliar with. She’d been talking with her friends and they decided that what they’d really like would be a list of children’s books in which diversity is just a part of everyday life. A friend of mine turned new mom had an interesting request the other day.
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