Thousands of English teachers and reading specialists took over the Baltimore Convention Center recently for the annual conference of the National Council of Teachers of English and its affiliated Assembly on Literature for Adolescents workshop. There I heard the same startling statistics over and over. Sadly, it wasn’t the first time the numbers had been brought up at a meeting of book lovers. I had been hearing the same statistic for almost a year at conferences all over the country, including the National Women’s Studies Association, the Kweli literary conference, the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators and Baltimore’s CityLit Festival....
...In 2018, just 1% of children’s books featured an American Indian/First Nation protagonist. That’s 23 out of 3,134 books published. Only 5%, or 170 books, starred Latinx children, while Asian Pacific Islanders and Asian Americans were the central characters in 7%, or 218 books. African American children were the main characters in 10%, or 301 of these books....
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- - Volume: 7 - WEEK: 50 Date: 12/11/2019 6:21:22 PM -