Diversity in the News

June 20th – June 27th, 2013

NEW BLOG ALERT

• July 1—31: Disability in Kidlit —Organized by Kody Keplinger and Corinne Duyvis, the blog series  “will feature posts by readers, writers, bloggers, and other peeps from the YA and MG communities discussing disability and kidlit.” Call for bloggers now closed.

ON OUR RADAR

• As Demographics Shift, Kids' Books Stay Stubbornly White via NPR’s Code Switch
• Why Hasn’t the Number of Multicultural Books Increased In Eighteen Years? (includes infographic) at Lee & Low Books – features opinions from Kathleen T. Horning, Director of Cooperative Children’s Book Center (CCBC);  Poet/Author Nikki Grimes, Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop, Professor Emerita, The Ohio State University, and more
• Related: Coloring Outside the Lines: The Diversity Gap in Children’s Literature via Bookriot
• Roger Sutton from Horn Book weighs in: A very good question

The Gender Divide

Not only is CBC Diversity concerned with increasing the representation of all youth in the books that they read, but the initiative is also concerned with the make-up of the children's book publishing industry and creating a representative and equal environment in the workplace. Publishing, similar to librarianship and teaching, has the appearance of being a very female-saturated industry but, if what the following infographic illustrates (courtesy of Learnstuff.com) can be applied to all industries, it might be interesting to see just where the publishing world fits in.