A Call to Action: more diversity in children’s books.

Remember my Centipede Dragon post regarding my decision (at the brilliant and gentle insistence of my librarian friend) to finally make the kids Asian in my book? I stated as fact that "children's books featuring minority kids don't sell," and pretty much didn't go any further; my attempt to tiptoe around the flash-point topic of race. In case you want to delve a bit deeper, All Things Considered did great reporting about this topic last week:
http://wamu.org/programs/all_things_c...
It's 8.5 minutes long, and probably the most honest discussion I've heard in mass media about why diversity in children's books has not yet taken hold.

All Things Considered then interviewed a Vermont bookstore owner who advocated activism for diversity in books:
http://wamu.org/programs/all_things_c...
This one’s about 6 minutes long. This too is a very level-headed response to what could be a hot-button topic!
But I hope these 15 minutes will give a great background to what is going on, and what diversity means, as Ms. Bluemle defines it: Diversity means …”[ ] the book must feature a main character of color in a story that is not driven by racial issues. So mainstream stories of kids having all kinds of adventures and different genres of literature.”

Hmm, I think Centipede Dragon fits the bill!

To go back in history, NPR first reported about this on June 2, 2014: http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2...

To leave you with a visual sense of why this “weneeddiversebooks” movement came about, I’ll leave you with this graphic from: http://blog.leeandlow.com/2013/06/17/...