Who is on the Cover?
2002--2012
Who is on the Cover?
The Demographics of Fictional Picture Books in the Twenty-First Century
Bringing Balance to Selected Topic areas for an Anti-Racist Library
By Nell Fleming
Graduate School of Library and Information Science
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Who is on the Cover?
2002--2012
“Book covers can be seen as a doorway through which we glimpse the text. The
illustrated front is an advertisement and a tease, partially revealing, partially concealing
the content.” (Mathew’s and Moody – Weedon 117).
(cite editor…but I’d rather give credit to the actual contributor…how to do this?)
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Who is on the Cover?
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Abstract
Publishers are producing thousands of books per year for children, and of these
approximately half of picture books that are fictional have people on the covers. Of my
sampling only twelve percent of those books have brown faces on the covers of which
only 4% are books with clearly defined African Americans on the cover where the theme
is not one of culture, history, race or racism. The book covers are equally split between
images of girls and boys. Therefore a brown or black girl can run across someone who
looks like her in a book which might reflect her interest approximately 2% of the time,
not taking into account specifics of the exact resemblance of the child. Librarians are
deciding what to buy based on their school population, budget and school publisher
availability. The odds a brown girl will run across a book with a person who looks like
her, and that she will enjoy based on her own preferences are indeed quite slim. It is
therefore even more vital that we as collection managers educate ourselves on how to
balance the collection demographically for all children by topic in fiction as well as nonfiction. To do so is to create an environment of anti-racism, which is different than a
non-racist environment.
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Table of Contents
I.
Who’s on the cover
Introduction
5-8
My bias as a researcher
8-15
Working Definitions
16
Quantitative Methods
17-30




2005 Sampling
CCBC Stats 2005
CCBD Stats 2012
Sampling 2012
20
27
28
29
Understanding racism today and the Anti-racist view
30-33
Understanding Identity Development in Children
33-39
Understanding Imagery
39-50
II.
Who’s Looking at the Cover
Understanding the Publisher’s view
50-52
Understanding the consumer’s view
52-54
Understanding today’s students: Who’s looking at the cover
54-56
The librarians view - Collection Development
56-71
Conclusion
71-72
Appendixes
73-8?
References
90?
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Introduction
Top 100 Children’s books of All-Time by Children’s books guide is one of many lists
created yearly to show beloved and “timeless” children’s books which are published
mostly in the United States in the past century. Of this list, only three books have any
faces other than white on the cover, one of which is a beautifully written landmark book,
Snowy Day, by Ezra Jack Keats.
Snowy day is as elegant a book as Sidney Portier was an elegant actor. Some work is so
magnificent that it cannot be outdone in one’s lifetime; however, this did not reduce the
anguish over forty years of bypassing great work by black actors in favor of white actors
work. When Denzel Washington and Hallie Berry won their Academy awards in 2002
almost forty years later it’s no wonder the actor, the first female black actor to win the
award shed a few tears. Snow Day was published in 1962, just two years earlier than
Portier’s 1964 Academy award, and it feels like we are waiting still for the next timeless
performance by a black character in a work of fiction for children. Though many books
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with black characters whether supporting, leading, fictional or historical have been
published in books few make our timeless lists.
John Steptoe was the first African American author to publish a picture book featuring
black characters for a black audience.
Stevie is a book about a boy who gains and loses a foster brother whom he didn’t grow to
like until he was gone. The racial empowerment movement saw an increase in books
about African American culture and heritage and mainstream publishers continued to
publish books for white people and those for black people separately. Big Cowboy
Western written by Ann Herbert Scott , her first book for children, and illustrated by
African American illustrator Richard W. Lewis was another such book aimed at giving
African American Children in the housing projects a
a positive
image. In the seventies and eighties a sudden shift to books for white audiences with
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Who is on the Cover?
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supporting characters who are black are seen in many books, and some cherished
classics were reprinted with text and image changes to reflect this trend. Still, it wasn’t
until the nineties that the publishing industry saw supporting characters for mainstream
audiences with characters of color. The introduction of Little Bill, &Dora and Diego.
Note the original illustrations by Varnette P. Honeywood for Little Bill, and the
subsequent illustrations that match the television series based on the original book
characters.
Once Little Bill went main-stream, the facial features on the characters became more
rounded and symmetrical, whereas the features on the original illustrations are more
influenced by cubism and are boxy with caricature type faces. Also notice the original
father was dark skinned with a lighter skinned mother and a medium Little Bill. The
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Who is on the Cover?
2002--2012
television show has Little Bill looking almost identical to his father both with a lighter
hue and a darker mother. One wonders if the creator had more control in the television
business than in the book publishing industry over imagery. But soon after the new
millennium Little Bill books became harder for institutions to buy new unless they
specifically identified them on Amazon and of course with our suggested guidelines of
keeping books in the library current, they fell off the radar, if they had ever been a
priority. On top of this, library professors in some coursework warn against purchasing
books for children based on popular television series, suggesting that these titles are
both not quality literature and also warning against the dangers of contributing to the
television media market. This advice combined with our limited attention span for
“nitch” publishing leaves us with the few books published with brown faces from 200020013 and counting. With a trend of publishing less and less books with black and
brown faces for the mainstream in the past decade, combined with a rash of weeding
books from the sixties through the eighties leaves us with a handful of twenty-year old
picture books on our shelves for our students of color that are not historical in nature.
How can we as librarians address this imbalance in our libraries with the resources currently
available to us?
My own bias as a researcher
I gave birth to a beautiful baby girl, who could hold her head up and look at me
instantly, a skill most infants do not achieve until one month of life. She opened her big
eyes to look directly and steadily at me. During the first year, people continued to
comment on how observant a baby she was compared to others. Her pediatrician said
the same thing every month when we visited for her monthly appointments: “Wow,
Strong”! And he would grab the chart and double check her age because she was always
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Who is on the Cover?
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so far ahead developmentally that he assumed he had made a mistake. Then he would
note that she was a breastfed baby and say, “Ah, breastfed”. I wish I could take credit
for her achievement by saying I did a bang up job as a mother, and followed a perfect
nutrition and exercise plan during pregnancy which combined with breastfeeding
created this amazing specimen, but I can’t. This little girl came into the world ready to
achieve and I only am here to make sure I don’t prevent her or let others prevent her
from succeeding. My little girl, who was born in 2002 is now eleven years old, has
attended her first dance, and is highly conscious of the frequency in which she feels she
“does not fit in”. Ronnell is biracial, with a white mother, (me) and a black father, of
African American heritage.
As a mother, and special education teacher, who became a librarian during
Ronnell’s K-2 years and started working in a school library during her 3rd-6th years,
I am a likely candidate for helicopter parent, over-involved in every way. I am
extremely observant of what goes on in my child’s life and walk a tightrope between
ensuring she is safe from a racist world and making her tough enough to deal with it.
When my husband and I announced our engagement in 1992 my family wrote frantic
letters begging us not to marry or at least, if we would not listen to reason avoid having
children. When we returned from our honeymoon, a pregnant teacher in Illinois asked
me many questions about my family’s reaction to our marriage. She sympathized with
my family, she said, and added she would not let her unborn child date any of my future
children. Not because she was racist, of course, but because it would be “too hard” for
them in our society.
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Who is on the Cover?
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When Ronnell was in preschool, I heard a whispered conversation about me in
the hallway corners of an Illinois school when I had asked a purely academic question
of whether her private school, who prided itself on diversity, wanted to market more to
the African American’s in our community (as their diversity didn’t include but 2 AA
children). I offered to help them with this, my intention to further their own stated
mission and goals. I had no negative thoughts about the organization, and thought it
was a great place for other black and biracial children to attend. I thought it was “a best
kept secret” in town however, within ten minutes parents and staff huddled in a private
panic about whether or not I was viewing them as racist. When I overheard their
comments I was floored. Merely offering to further their own goals and mission by
marketing their school to the African American community had caused as assumption
that I viewed them as racist. It became clear after further conversations they were
terrified of dealing with race, and that “multicultural” and “diversity” didn’t mean more
than a few token African American kids. They clearly wanted the majority of students to
be white. I was told the following month that the board felt it would be “racist” to
purposefully deliver their school brochures to the list of African American owned
businesses in the community which had been created by the towns own Chamber of
Commerce. Interestingly, the following year they put Ronnell’s and the only other AA
female’s photo on their billboard to advertise their school. I wasn’t asked my permission
until the photo was taken and ready to put up. False advertising was considered
appropriate, but to actually have contact with AA in the community was considered
“racist”.
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Who is on the Cover?
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The message my daughter always hears is she is not “just” a girl. She is a biracial
girl. She might be approached by a white woman in a supermarket, who comments on
what a beautiful girl she is. And it’s true, Ronnell is beautiful. But she doesn’t hear
“beautiful girl.” She hears, “beautiful biracial girl.”
A boy from an Indian family in West Virginia, where we lived next was told he
couldn’t play with her anymore at the age of 6 because they got off the bus holding
hands. They never spoke to each other again despite living three doors from each other
on a dead end street. When I called to inquire if there was anything I should know
about why this child had told mine that his mother didn’t want them playing together
she hung up on me. We had been treated well by this family prior to the hand holding
incident. In Wisconsin a four year old came into our garage and told my daughter that
white and black people getting married is crazy and they shouldn’t ever do it. This was
in 2011.
When her dad takes her places for the first time they are treated very well, but
when I show up everyone becomes silent for a moment. I suppose a lighter skinned
black daughter of a darker skinned black man is an appropriate image in white society,
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Who is on the Cover?
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but a white woman with a medium skinned black child is perhaps unexpected.
After eleven years, going on four years in Wisconsin in the same school system,
children still ask her each time they see me “if I am indeed her biological mother”. Our
society continues to polarize and discussing race is next to impossible on a good day
with friends and peers to say nothing of talking to people who are merely colleagues or
community members. We’ve were even been asked to leave a community event midstream because the individual in question stated “we have a nice community here, and
you are not wanted” Burlington WI 2013. And yet, in casual conversation, white person
to white person, I and others are expected to agree that “things are so much better now”
and that “racism really only exists in rare and isolated persons and incidents” and in
other states or cities. I am usually forced to agree less I give a lecture or disabuse a
person of their ignorance by depressing them with victim talk of our personal
experiences. Sometimes I am forced to agree that it is better, it’s at least legal for us to
get married, and no one burns a cross in our yard, beats us up or lynches my husband,
so yes, it is better. This type of thinking however ignores the layers and layers of racism
yet to be unveiled.
These experiences no doubt can jade a mother; make her overprotective and over
sensitive to issues of race. So when I thought I was seeing a pattern of white males on
the covers of new books in a school library I was volunteering in, I tried to ignore it. I
tried not to remember the day when I was pregnant and went into a Walden’s in a mall
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Who is on the Cover?
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in Carol Stream, IL asking where their books for babies with black and brown
faces were located. I was shown the only book for children with a black face on the
cover, a Michael Jordan basketball book. As I continued to browse in contemplation, I
watched the employee tell two teens, one Asian and one Black that they could not have
an application for employment because they had no openings. I told her in front of the
teens that it was not legal to prevent them from applying for future work and to go and
get the applications for them immediately which she did at my request. I then told the
teens to call Walden’s headquarters and inquire to which stores might be accepting
applications. The teens walked away with looks that told me this was unlikely to occur.
Finally, the clerk told me that their store didn’t have a high need for books of the nature
I was looking for and to try a store closer to a dense black population in the southern
suburbs.
I struggle with these associations every time I think I see a pattern. Am I
experiencing a reality of deficiency in what is available to our children or am I
experiencing a fear response that this might be so? I finally decided to test my theory
and get out of my head and into quantitative research. I started by going to my local
public library which had a friendly staff and atmosphere, and had a nice overall
selection of books that felt very balanced to me and my daughter. I pulled every
Halloween book out to peek at the cover while sitting on the floor discussing the
upcoming holiday with my child. I was looking for any non-white face on any
Halloween book, this was in 2007. Out of three rows of Halloween books I only found
one book with any non-white faces on the cover and as I stated in my CAS proposal,
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“Halloween Monster, by Catherine Stock published in 1986, features an
African American father with his two sons—no mother or other female is
depicted. It was then that I decided a quantitative study of the illustrations in
children’s picture books, specifically the cover photos [was] timely and
appropriate.”
I have provided my daughter from the time she was born with as diverse array of
images, music, cultural and social opportunities. Her first hairdresser was a biracial
female and in WV she attended Heritage Club for AA girls to learn about their heritage
in a Girl Scout type setting. We attended Kwanzaa celebrations and activities and
learned about history by going to AA Museums. Her pastors were an interracial couple
and her principal was a man who promoted diversity in her elementary school by
celebrating all family types including same sex couples, quite the feat in a WV public
school. Her father later got her hooked on Dr. Who, a BBC series that is now quite
biracial in form with several black characters in their line-up for the third season of the
new Doctor. Despite our efforts to read good book for children of African American
heritage, my child still is slightly resistant to any new book with a picture of someone
African American on the cover if we are in a library or book store. Why would this be?
I do not censor anything, even those items that are so commonly criticized by women of
my generation as being bad for girls. I try my best to maintain balance and she has
always been allowed to choose her own literature for reading pleasure. So why does she
automatically look slightly uncomfortable every time she sees a black person on the
cover of a book? She’s not alone, many white and black students of all ages who come in
the library shy away from any picture book with a black face on the cover.
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One of my male African American students told me the other day in response to
learning a little bit about pirates who are black, on ships like Blackbeard’s ship and the
Whydah, responded, “I don’t believe it”. I have no images to show him. Even the best
scholarly articles and books show more black slaves and white pirates than black pirates.
Even the latest book about the ship Whydah only has a few token images of black
pirates in the background, but features a black sailor in the exhibition. This is nonfiction of course, but what fiction book have you seen with a picture of a little boy who is
black dressed as a pirate? Fifty percent of pirates were black, but no one realizes that
because of our imagery. Even our historical fiction books with brown faces on the cover
show either victims or heroes or both. Do children really want to be heroes? That is
dangerous business in the real world. Social justice is important, but the everyday child
doesn’t see themselves as crusaders nor should they be required to. Nancy gets to be
Fancy and Uncle Chuck drives a truck, but Ron is on a Mission and Hannah is following
the [quilt] map to freedom. We create an imbalance by stocking mostly non-fiction and
historical fiction books with black faces on the cover in our libraries. This in turn
creates an imbalance in our libraries that affects our students’ view of themselves and
others negatively. When will white and brown children see books with brown faces on
the covers as books with characters they can all identify with? How can we as librarians
address this imbalance in our libraries with the resources currently available to us?
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Working Definitions
Racism - Defined as an “institutionalized racism” in this paper. Personal racism, bias,
stereotypes, prejudiced and other forms of discrimination are relevant, but in this paper,
unless otherwise explained, the term racism, means the state of the society we live in,
including libraries, which structure is inherently racist until anti-racist actions are taken
by members of the privileged group.
Anti-racism- While personal beliefs and philosophies are important, for the purposes
of this paper, Anti-racism will be defined as actions taken to improve equality and
fairness for the benefit of all people, including that binary we think of as the white and
black peoples.
Biracial - For the purposes of this paper, biracial, will mean a person with one white
and one black parent unless otherwise identified (i.e. Asian Mother, White Father).
Black/Brown - People from any country, or ethnic group, whose skin is brown or dark
brown. For the purposes of this paper, ethnicity, culture and linguistic community are
broader than the scope of this study. Black is not simply a substitute for African
American, but encompasses all people of African heritage.
Ethnicity – People who share the same cultural experience (i.e. Greek, Arabic, Jewish,
Polish)
Heritage Group – People who share the same ancestral group (i.e. European, African,
Asian)
Minority - peoples who are or were once a minority population in the United States
who were or are systematically oppressed by the majority or former majority. The fact
that some groups are now outnumbering white peoples or will soon has not yet changed
the balance of power in our society and this working definition will suffice for the
purposes of this study.
Multi-culturalism - Defined by many as “more than one culture” or “many cultures”
or “overlapping cultures” in practice this term ends up meaning “brown cultures” and
“non-white cultures”. Euphemisms for people of color are avoided when possible. The
term multicultural will be used in as limited a way as possible to cite or provide good
resources which may be identified as such.
White - People of European ancestry of any ethnicity, culture, background or linguistic
community. The word Caucasian is purposefully omitted from this paper due to the
origin and meaning of the term.
Fictional Picture Book – A 32 page book for children age 3 to 10 combining words
and pictures to tell a story that is fictional.
Quantitative Methods
My original proposal included the following questions:
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1. It appears to me that white males are over represented on covers and in
illustrations, in children’s picture books. Is this the case?
2. Do picture book collections in school libraries represent the (approximately)
50/50 gender ratio of the larger U.S. society?
3. It appears to me that when white female children are represented in picture
books they tend to be red-haired? Where are the brown headed little girls?
4. The minority population at my daughter’s school is twenty-two percent. Would a
balanced collection require an exact ratio of picture books showing children of
color? How else might a balanced collection be determined and measured?
5. When interracial couples are represented, I have noticed that covers depict a
white male with a minority female. At least four commonly held books illustrate
this depiction: How My Parents Learned to Eat, Black/White Just Right, Black
is Brown is Tan, and The Hello Goodbye Window. How does this reflect (or not
reflect) patterns among interracial couples in the larger U.S. society? In other
words, are we afraid to draw a picture of a black man married to a white woman
in children’s picture books?
6. In Holiday-themed books, how frequently are children of color represented on
the cover? Why does it seem that only white children go trick or treating in
books? Don’t Asian American children trick or treat too?
7. I have noticed that Little Bill books seem to be out of print. Is there a trend to
stop producing books like Ezra Jack Keats creates with children of color just
being children in the snow, with their dog, with their friends?
These kinds of questions are not new. Some other authors are asking the same
questions. In the book, Does Anyone Else Look Like Me, Nakazawa states, “and so I
headed to the book store…but combing the shelves lead to disbelief, where were the
books…geared to multiracial families?” (32)
I started out by gathering data to see if the statistics would answer some or all of these
questions. Were white males over-represented in picture books for children in the first
decade of the twenty-first century? I found that yes; this was a pattern I was indeed
seeing. (Appendix A) Out of 612 picture books identified as for sale by Follett Titlewave
published in the mean year of 2005, with people on the cover, 212 had a white male as
the predominant character for the work. It also appeared, with 208 of those books
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2002--2012
portraying white females on the cover that the numbers were about 50/50 with girls
being equally represented. Although I still feel I am seeing a lot of red headed girls in
the media and in books overall my data did not support this theory of the sampling I
took, and the scope of this project has been narrowed to focus on race and not sex or
hair color. The total number of minority representation in this sampling of book covers
was 16.7% including all demographics other than white or Caucasian of both sexes. This
is considerably lower than the 22% minority at the school in WV and the 49% minority
at her current elementary school which mirrors national statistics that in 2007 40% of
elementary students were minorities according to CBS news: and projected to
outnumber white children by 2023. (1)
My question about interracial couples depicted on covers is a mute point in this study as
there were no interracial couples shown on the cover of any of the books taken in the
sampling and only a handful, two or three books with biracial children as a topic or
theme. In holiday themed books there was a increase in the sampling of brown skinned
characters on the cover if you take into account the numerous books on favorite TV
characters such as Dora the Explorer and Diego which are included in the sampling.
This accounted for 2 books with prominently placed brown skinned Latino characters.
There were also books with token brown skinned characters or of equal prominence
with white characters, as in the case of The bake shop ghost by Jacqueline K. Ogburn,
which does quadruple the number of books identified in this decade that are at least
available for purchase for my original data collection in the topic of Halloween.
My final question was one of books like Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats, and the Little
Bill Television character series, popular in the 90’s, that seems available only sparsely
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through school purchasing agents. Although I found no Little Bill Books available
published in 2005 and available in 2009 through Follett Titlewave there were a few
books of the type in question available for purchase such as Denise Fleming’s The First
day of Winter and My Pumpkin by Julia Noonan as well as Not Norman: A Goldfish
Story by Kelly Bennett. There were approximately 14 books with African American boys
on the cover that might have fallen into this category out of 612 books.
This data gave me the information I needed to continue to look at the small selection of
books published with minority faces on the cover that did not include historical,
cultural, or race related themes.
These themes are no doubt extremely important and have their own set of deficiencies
such as the lack of Black Pirate images in historical accounts despite the knowledge that
up to 50% of pirates were black and repetitive stories and themes such as MLK
biographies and Rosa Parks stories, which are necessary, but overdone in the face of so
many historical figures to choose from in the history of Black America. However my
scope is limited to fiction, that is not historical in nature, and so that is the deficiency
which I wish to address and its impact on student’s view of themselves and others.
I am now able to say yes; indeed I am seeing a pattern. I am also able to say, yes there
are some books being published, but I am going to have to work harder to identify them,
review them and get them purchased to build a balanced anti-racist collection for our
students.
2005 Sampling Methods – Follett-Titlewave
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My methods for taking the sampling were to use the Follett Titlewave program to filter
my selection as follows:




Publication year: 2005
K-3 and 3-6
Easy
Fiction
Then I deleted multiples and books without people on the covers. This search took the
initial results from about 2500 to about 700. There were a few books that I knew were
not picture books left over, and I eliminated those chapter books as well leaving me with
about 616 choices. I later found two errors and my final number was 614 picture books
for my sampling. I used Microsoft excel to list the books by title, author, publisher, and
topic. I chose the topics, such as baseball or bullying based on two criteria, anything
observable on the cover, and any topics listed by Follett Titlewave. Finally, I took on
the task of identifying the demographics of the people on the covers. I chose the method
of identifying whether or not there was a prominent person on the cover and listing this,
for example, the book Stagestruck by Tomie de Paola has one person on the cover,
therefore this person is prominent, and this person appears to be a young white male
and so I put 1M under the category of white prominence in the excel sheet. Determining
what prominence did and didn’t mean, and how to categorize mostly drawn or painted
images by racial classification was difficult. Therefore, African American was not in
itself a category but anyone with ‘brown or black skin’ that wasn’t otherwise identified as
Asian, or Native American along with any person of African heritage that was not
American. Although Latino is a category worth analyzing, in this case, I did not
differentiate between black English speaking, black Spanish speaking and black French
speaking peoples or between brown and black peoples with any ancestry that is or might
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be African in heritage. This decision was made for three reasons. First, the scope of this
paper is not wide enough to encompass all of the intricacies of race and ethnicity that
exist in reality or to philosophize on the meaning of race as a social construct. Rather
this paper is exploring what American children, in their understanding of identity and
race may be seeing when they look at the cover of a book. Three, percentage wise, the
numbers of brown faces on covers were insignificant enough on the whole for this
breakdown for the purpose of a sampling to warrant further identifiers. I did collect data
on sex, determining whether the character was male or female initially and the
intersection of race and sex is quite noticeably significant. While books about males and
females were almost equal in number, the books with prominent Native American males
were significantly higher than the books with prominent Native American females with
only one book having a Native American female on the cover, and her back is to the
reader, showing no face.
Demographic totals:

Prominent White Male: 212

Prominent White Female: 208

Prominent Black Male: 31

Prominent Black Female: 43

Prominent Asian Male: 4

Prominent Asian Female: 12

Prominent Native American Male: 5

Prominent Native American Female: 1
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Next, I looked at themes of the books for each category and searched for patterns. There
were at least eighty unique themes or topics in the prominent white male category.
Many topics were repeated twice or more such as superheroes, dogs, cats, and the first
day of school. Some were not repeated, such as fishing, theater, rockets, and the tooth
fairy. None of the topics were related to race or race relations, and the topics related to
culture were primarily religious in nature.
Theme for White Females were slightly more repetitive and female oriented but still a
large number of themes were present.
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For Prominent Black males there were only twenty themes that were not related to
culture, history, or race/race relations.
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The above wordle includes all themes including cultural and historical for all brown
skinned males. None of the books with Native American Males or Asians had any
themes at all that were not related to ethnicity, race, culture or history. I learned by this
sampling that there are not enough books written about people who are Native
American from year to year to do a proper analysis, other than to show the gaping
deficiency indicating the need for fiction books to be written about Native Americans
living a contemporary life as other Americans are depicted.
The books written by and about people with African Ancestry, do indeed have more
variety of themes associated with the few books that are published from year to year.
However, the numbers are still extremely low compared to the default category of White
male/White female. There were also ninety books with no prominent faces, either
groups of faces or two to three equally prominent faces. Of these, only fifteen of those
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books had equally prominent or tokenized brown or black faces on them.
Total themes for all books with groups on the cover, all white and white with others
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Book Cover Theme Wordle for Asian Male Faces:
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Asian Female:
CCBC Statistics for 2005
The Cooperative Children’s Book Center located at the School of Education, University
of Wisconsin-Madison, publishes yearly statistics on all books published, acquired by
CCBC, written by and about African Americans, Asians, Native Americans, and Latino
authors and subjects. Although not limited to picture book covers their statistics mirror
my own. In 2005, the year of my sampling, there were approximately 5,000 books
published for children and young adults. Of these 5,000 they acquired 2800 of these
books. Of these only 157 books were published with content about African Americans
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and only 34 about Native Americans, and 64 about Asian/Pacific Americans, and 76
about Latino Americans. These statistics show an interestingly low trend in publishing
and includes non-fiction, chapter books, young adult titles and titles by authors who are
minorities as well as the fictional picture books. Although my study doesn’t look at
content, and a brown face on the cover doesn’t necessarily mean the book is about an
African American or Latino exclusive topic, the two sets of statistics are related in that
minority authors do not have the same power of voice that authors who are white have
when it comes to children’s book publishing. What is significant about the findings for
these groups of books and authors is the number of minority authors who were able to
publish outside of racial, ethnic or cultural content. Out of the seventy five books
published with African American authors only twelve of those books had content that
was not African American related. Of those twelve, two were non-fiction, two were
about cultures other than their own, and only six of the remaining eight were picture
books. Six books out of 5,000 can be reported as having been authored by an African
American, that do not have a topic of African American related content, in 2005. Of
these six authors, only one is female, and she is a celebrity, Jada Pinkett Smith. This
same trend can be seen for all minority authors from year to year.
CCBC 2012
It has been four years since my sampling was taken, and eight years since these books
were published and so it is vital that we look at some statistics between 2005 and
through 2012 to see what changes are taking place. The estimated publishing of
children’s books for 2006-2012 holds steady at 5,000 per year with the number of books
received by the group steadily increasing from year to year. Despite an all time high in
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2011 and 2012 of receiving 3600 of these books at the Center, in 2012 only 68 books
were written by African Americans, an all time low since 1990, with a total of only 119
books being written for the year. Does this mean that more or less picture books have
black and brown faces on the covers of titles without specific minority content?
Children's Books By and About People of Color Published in the U.S.
2002Total
Asian
Number
Number
Pacifics/
of Books African /
of Books
American
Asian
Year
Received African
Published
Indians
Pacific
at CCBC Americans
(Est.)
Americans
By About By About By About By
2012
5,000
3,600 68
119
6
22
83
76
59
Latinos
About
54
2011
5,000
3,400 79
123
12
28
76
91
52
58
2010
5,000
3,400 102 156
9
22
60
64
55
66
2009 5,000
3,000 83
157
12
33
67
80
60
61
2008 5,000
3,000 83
172
9
40
77
98
48
79
2007 5,000
3,000 77
150
6
44
56
68
42
59
2006 5,000
3,000 87
153
14
41
72
74
42
63
2005 5,000
2,800 75
149
4
34
60
64
50
76
2004 5,000
2,800 99
143
7
33
61
65
37
61
2003 5,000
3,200 79
171
11
95
43
78
41
63
2002 5,000
3,150
69
166
6
64
46
91
48
94
(Reproduced with permission) http://ccbc.education.wisc.edu/books/pcstats.asp
Sampling – 2012 Follett-Titlewave
Out of 2,500 books I identified 53 with people on the cover with brown skin that could
have been of African heritage. Once I removed errors, for Asian Pacific Islanders,
Latino’s and Jewish titles, as well as any folktales, historical fiction, books focused on
race or culture or immigration I was left with nine books. Of these nine books, six have
African American females on the cover and two have African American males of which
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one is a biracial male and one book that was somewhat ambiguous. These numbers
reflect a trend of declining publication for minorities in children’s fiction.
Understanding racism today and the Anti-racist view
Thanks to the Obama administration overt verbal racism is back in the forefront of our
consciousness and the internet is full of hate speech and illogical arguments about race
and racial images. The movie for The Hunger Games was an example of character
imagery not matching public perception regardless of the accuracy of the books
description of the character in question, not to mention the authors own approval of the
actor selection. My own students came to class irate about how a black person could be
cast in a role where she clearly didn’t “look like” she was supposed to. I used this as a
chance to go back to the source and I asked them to read aloud the character description
in the book which described a brown skinned girl with curly hair. My students were
stunned, they hadn’t remembered this description. I asked them what the problem with
the casting was for them, and they said, the character was also described as having
“looked just like” a blonde girl and that if they looked alike they wouldn’t be the same
color. Again, I sent them back to the source to find the English, our class was Research
and Inquiry for high school seniors’, and for my students, English is a second language
so we sought out the vocabulary to discuss definitions. The vocabulary in question was
the word, “resembled”. I asked the students, what does this word mean and their
translation to their language was “looks like” so we discussed the difficulties with
translation and we discussed other possible meanings. I asked them if they had family
members with different hair colors that they resembled, facial expression, body posture,
facial features, etc. They started to get the idea, the students were all white except for
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one biracial boy, and I asked, can a black person ever look like a white person? They
adamantly said, “No”! I asked them, “Do you remember my daughter? (I have pictures
up on the wall) and they nodded affirmatively, some smiled because they have seen her
around. I asked, “Does she look like me?” to which their facial expression changed to
one of “Oh yeah” surprise and revelation. The one biracial boy in the room who rarely
spoke or participated let out a loud guffaw. The students perception of race combined
with their use of language had created a barrier to their ability to see connections
between white and black people. These were students who are relatively used to
differences, accepting and tolerant. They simply had a blind spot. Without shaming
anyone I was able to facilitate a discussion where the students could come to their own
conclusions. This of course requires a trust level and a comfort level with discussions
about race that we are generally unaccustomed.
The job of an anti-racist person is to become comfortable with discussing race, analyzing
race, making mistakes along the way, taking risks, to create a more balanced and fair
society. Part of this process is seeking out resources, becoming educated and shifting
priorities. In my school library I have attempted to fill several deficiencies in my first
three years on the job. After a particularly large order had been processed I made a
display of new books, without any specific theme, just a celebration of new titles of
diverse topics both fiction and nonfiction with several brown faces on the covers. The
reaction was swift and immediate. First, at least three quarters of the high school
students of color came in to the library and immediately checked out large numbers of
books in various genres. Some were books with brown faces, but interestingly they
chose a diverse collection of books. In a library where high school students over the age
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of 14 are rarely seen this was quite a change. I then had a student, who is white; get
really interested in a fiction series with a main character that is black request the rest of
the series through interlibrary loan. Another student requested the purchase of more
Bluford high titles, another series we had recently acquired. A white staff member then
told me, in all honestly and well meaning, that she felt, “I had gone over-board with the
purchasing of books with black faces on the covers.” Furthermore, she felt the displays
were disproportionate to the population we serve. My first reaction was to deal with the
complaint in a neutral quantitative manner. I first counted the books on display and
found out of forty-three books on display, there were only five books with brown faces in
the current display. I then counted the total number of books with African American
content by using the library catalog to pull subject headings and measured the
percentage against the total number of books in the library. The percentage was
considerably lower than the percentage of students currently enrolled who were brown
or black. After that I took some qualitative data, and asked other staff persons to do
their own looking around and tell me what they thought about the balance of the
collection. There were not additional red flags. When I discussed my findings with this
staff person she did her own count and was surprised that she had actually mis-read the
covers of several books, and in her anxiety that I was creating an over abundance due to
personal bias had assumed that at least one title was a black face when it was in fact a
white face. However she did not change her mind about me going overboard. It made
me wonder, how does one measure balance? Are all black books indeed only for a black
audience? I don’t think so, but many people do, either consciously or unconsciously.
Imagine if you would a library with 95% books with brown faces on the cover and only
5% books with white faces of which only half depicted white males. Of these 2.5% of
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books all but six of the books were non-fiction or historical fiction. Would we tell the
white student, “it’s ok, it’s not about color, it’s about the story”, the way we do for our
students of color? How indeed do we measure what balance means? To do this requires
stepping outside our comfort zone, and doing things differently than we normally do.
The goal isn’t a color blind library, but the goal is a library with books about different
kinds of people sharing the similar experiences.
What does it mean to be a racist? According to Beverly Tatum, it is easy for most white
Americans to think of at least a handful of racist celebrities if asked however, when she
asked, “Think now of a nationally known white person you would consider to be an
antiracist activist, a white man or woman who is clearly identifiable as an ally to people
of color in the struggle against racism. Do you find yourself drawing a blank?” (Tatum)
Not being racist and being anti-racist are very different things. To be anti-racist one
must according to definition hold, “beliefs, actions, movements, and policies adopted or
developed to oppose racism” (Wikipedia 1). How many anti-racist librarians do you
know? What do they do in the field? What can you do?
Understanding Identity Development in Children
The identity development of children is a largely unconscious process with stages that
include Erickson’s Industry vs. Inferiority Stage in children ages 5 – 11. Most children
during this stage of development will ideally develop a belief in their own abilities and a
strong self perception. This is the time where it is vital to provide opportunities for all
children to view themselves as part of the world, for white students, this more
commonly achieved without confusion, their sense of who they are is tied to cultural
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Who is on the Cover?
2002--2012
traditions, family heritage, a sense of comfort and stability and one of familiarity exists
in most areas of home and school life. For students of color in the United States, this
process is rarely unconscious and often confusing. If they identify with white cultural
ideals is this good or bad, what parts of their heritage will be a source of strength and
not anxiety, what will be familiar and or comfortable, and what will they be expected to
do when it isn’t? What other variables are in play for these students, are they poor or
middle class, English speaking and or from another region of the country or the world,
are their ancestors known to them or unknown, what is their religious background if
any, and what is their family’s current status in the community?
Race and gender constancy, according the Beverly Tatum is achieved and fixed by the
age of 7. Children may have questions prior to this constancy such as “Do I have to be
black?” (Tatum 43) may come up in preschool or Kindergarten. “To the question of why
he asked, he responded, “I want to be chief of paramedics.” His favorite TV show at the
time featured paramedics and firefighters, all of whom were White.” (43) Tatum
continues to explain how media messages, colorism in the black community, or other
dominant culture messages can be countered in order for children to achieve a healthy
sense of identity in both the stage of race and gender constancy and the Industry vs.
Inferiority stages.
Countering those messages is everyone’s job. Being an anti-racist librarian means not
only accepting and valuing every child and family regardless of race, or social class, and
providing accurate historical images, but also providing a constant vigil to avoid the
binary of the black student as victim and white student as oppressor. This doesn’t mean
we avoid or downplay history, on the contrary, the kinds of work we do for students self
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Who is on the Cover?
2002--2012
image and identity development are key for them to handle the important work we will
do with history and current events. However, going into the dark past or the dark
present with students who have undeveloped identity who are confused by the
unfamiliar and the mixed messages is like taking a boat trip in a storm without a radio,
or a life-vest.
Efforts to provide anti-bias curriculum are vitally important and engaging students in
discussions about race and racial injustice are as much so, but if you haven’t made it to
that level in your classroom or library it might be because you are not comfortable
yourself with the issues and how to deal with the magnitude of race and its impact on
our society. In fact, the state of society and the condition our students arrive to school
in are primarily outside of our control, and that in turn can make the job of engaging
students on these topics feel as if it might get out of control too, but being aware of
imagery and making the environment familiar and comfortable is not beyond our reach.
It is also not a low priority despite the demands of today’s curriculum and instructional
goals. In order to even begin to reach our goals, we need to level the playing field in
something as simple as checking out a picture book to read.
What is familiar and comfortable imagery?
You may wonder; how can a well stocked library with books representing children from
every walk of life not naturally be comfortable to any child? Is it really that big of a deal?
Aren’t black students used to living in a white dominant world? Isn’t a piece of good
literature with a white character just as good for black students as it is white? Some of
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2002--2012
us just resort to books with animal’s characters or books with large groups of students
for those first days of the school year. I think the answer really is: It depends. Some
students may accept the situation and be delighted on those rare occasions when a
character reflects their values or their person while others may reject reading for
entirely different reasons and never contemplate the scenario. Despite this, there are
many who do notice, they just aren’t telling you about it. In Varian Johnson’s blog entry
Where are all the black boys he states, “I grew up in a time when there were very few
books for young people featuring people of color. There's no way to describe how it feels
NOT to see yourself in books. There's no way to describe how it feels NOT to see other
authors that look like you writing books. As someone that had wanted to be an author
since I was in second grade, it was...crushing. Hell, it's still crushing. Have you ever
scanned the shelves at your local bookstore? If the real world were like the YA section, I
wouldn't exist” (Johnson 1).
Our students, ages 4 – 11 may not be able to articulate this feeling to us. They
may not even realize what is bothering them, or that we could do anything about it. Our
white students too, are potentially damaged by this, their own identities inflated in our
microcosms only to find out later in life that the world is changing and they feel
somehow they have lost something that maybe wasn’t really even there to begin with.
Those white students who understand the injustice are also hurt by this; it’s the same as
survivor guilt, why do I get something that someone else doesn’t. I was one of these
children, and spent years feeling miserable and powerless that I could not change the
injustice. My feelings of powerlessness started in 1977, in a small Southern Illinois town
on the first day our school integrated blacks and whites, more than twenty years after
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Who is on the Cover?
2002--2012
the law required it. I watched as terrified black students stood tense waiting to see how
they would be engaged while white students hung back in whispering circles with wide
eyes also wondering if violence would ensue. I was naïve and curious and asked my
white friend directly why she considered one young black boy “mean” although he
certainly looked mean, with clenched fists and a frown that was paralyzing. She matterof-factly told me “Because he’s black!” to which my mind reeled, and I instinctively
rejected this notion, but felt powerless to fight the belief. Twenty years later I had the
opportunity to ask the young man how he was feeling that day, and he laughed with me
and said, “Damn right I was terrified! I was clinching my fists to be ready for a beat
down”.
I was a blonde headed, white female, from a middle class family, with as much privilege
as you could get and the inequality of race hurt me as young as age 7. We underestimate
our youth. Books with black faces showing happy children engaging in real life modern
day activities are for little blonde headed boys and girls too.
So whose imagery are we seeking? When faced with challenges to selecting good books
for children in topic areas or demographic areas we are not familiar with, titles such as
“5 Books That Build Confidence in African American Children” sound very appealing
and so we follow the path to the resources with every intention of filling a deficiency.
The first two books listed get our attention:
1. Black All Around by Patricia Hubbell, illustrated by Don Tate
2. 2. As Fast As Words Could Fly by Pamela M. Tuck, illustrated by Eric Velasquez
The first book a celebration of the color black and the second celebrating the anti-racist
activities of a black writer, then we see the third book, and with my mind on the
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Who is on the Cover?
2002--2012
historical south in Greenville I read about a troubled boy who may be escaping a gang
and then
3. 3. Chess Rumble by G. Neri, illustrated by Jesse Joshua Watson
4. The Palm of My Heart: Poetry by African American Children By David
Adedjouma, Illustrated by R. Gregory Christie
5. The Jones Family Express by Javaka Steptoe
The next book has the usual poetry thrown in for good measure, and then finally a book
about an African American family and a holiday event. I start looking at the images on
the covers, and the topics and wondering, do any of these books feel safe or familiar? I
start wondering if these repetitive urban and historical themes are really going to do
what the title suggests for every child which is build confidence? What if the child has
never known hardship, or has never been to a city? All black and brown peoples do not
live in urban settings, nor are they all poor. In fact, “blacks comprise 22 percent of the
poor, but blacks only take in 14 percent of government benefits. Conversely, whites
make up 42 percent of the poor, but take in a disproportionate 69 percent of
government benefits” (Your Black World/Carnell 1). Yet publishers persist in depicting
urban settings with poor families in themes for picture books about people of color.
Books about boys who survive gang violence may not appeal to the suburban black child
who is the only one in his class. How will that feel if the book is recommended to him by
an adult or purchased for him? Does she think I’m in a gang? Does she think I’m like
him? We have to think critically about our audience with what we purchase, which is not
a one size fits all package. Will these books create confidence about black people and
their ability to survive injustice in white children? What about the black child who grew
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Who is on the Cover?
2002--2012
up in the 80’s in a small country town who listens to country music and whose dad
works on a barge? Will he relate?
White children need to see themselves as strong enough to handle tough urban
settings too. What picture books show white children as strong enough to survive gang
violence? I can’t say I’ve often seen picture books that showed intense activism on the
part of a white child to better their own community, there are a few which show
friendships despite the odds with people from other heritage groups, and questions of
race in difficult situations, but overall images and stories show a lot of white youth
powerless to change what ails us. I believe that a balance of comfort and discomfort is
in order. We’ve mastered the discomfort for books with black characters, and mastered
comfort for books with white characters and now it’s time to balance the playing field.
Understanding Imagery and Pictures
In her groundbreaking book Picture This: How Pictures Work; Molly Bang uses Little
Red Riding Hood as an example of how pictures are built. She started with simple
shapes, such as a red triangle to represent “red riding hood”, and asked herself
questions about its shape, size and color. She asked herself “Is it huggable?” (8) And
decided that no, it has sharp edges. She analyzes how red feels and comes up with a
disparate array of choices, including danger and vitality. She discusses the overlapping
subjective and objective reasons why these reactions may exist in one person for such a
simple shape as a little red triangle. Making the triangle rounded made it huggable and
changing the size in relation to the other objects made it more or less vulnerable. What
do you see when you look at the following Little Red Riding Hood Images on book
covers of various retellings?
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Who is on the Cover?
2002--2012
Which one of these images feels warm and safe? The image on the top left has warm
colors, and riding hood is centered in the middle surrounded by birds and flowers. She
appears fairly safe at the moment. The image on the top right has a red riding hood
looking at a rounded and friendly wolf and though her position is cautious to his
mischief she appears likely to come out ok. The Riding hood on the bottom left has a
face that is hidden, the title a play on words, is needed to know this is indeed the same
fairy tale; however, the image would not give it away. The car approaching from the
shadows with riding hood a small figure alone seems more ominous. Her size, and
location combined with the title let you know this tale is not a cozy read. The image on
the right bottom is clear enough to see riding hoods face is darker than the standard tale
and her position is centered though the relationship to the trees is not warm and
inviting but relatively unknown. The woods looms behind her in anticipation, her
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Who is on the Cover?
2002--2012
expression one of uncertainty rather than as smile. What does this say to children about
the experiences of a dark skinned child compared to a white skinned child? The same
woods may not provide the same experience for all who enter. While this may be a
perfect metaphor for reality is it really the message we want to send to our children?
Expect the best/Expect the worst that’s just the way it is
When we see an image we have an emotional response. This response in some ways is
unique to our person and in other ways, measurably the same from person to person.




For stability and calm we tend to enjoy “smooth, flat and horizontal shapes”
(Bang 42)
And “the upper half of the picture is a place of freedom, happiness, and triumph.”
(Bang 54)
“Light backgrounds feel more safe [safer] than dark backgrounds and the center
of the book gets our attention the best.”(Bang 68)
The strongest emotions felt come from the colors chosen to in the images. (Bang
74)
Look at these two books about families on “a beach”:
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Who is on the Cover?
2002--2012
When I pulled images for my sampling the book on the left came up over and over again
in my emotional center as one I would like to read. The characters are centrally located,
and yet they are perched higher than the center, both on the cover and in the image
itself, in a top window of the house, (sense of happiness) and the colors are soft and
warm and light, giving a sense of security, and the images are smooth, and the house is
fairly flat. The girl is also higher than the boy, and they look middle class, which I am,
and so this book calls to me as one I would enjoy. Imagine my surprise to read the
reviews and find out it is a story about a family whose summer home is destroyed by a
hurricane!
The book on the right is very popular, a Caldecott Honor book. The illustrations appear
pleasing, the family, is placed in the “happiness, freedom” area on the roof of the book.
The scene is one of a pleasant moment. The Colors are dark because it is nighttime, and
the shapes are varied but fairly flat which evokes stability. Emotionally however, the
dark colors combined with dark faces evoked the opposite emotional response in me
that said, “That book might be about unhappy things.” It has not yet circulated in my
school library despite having been put on display and being shelved in a special
Caldecott book area. I am assured that it is sensational and yet I still haven’t chosen it
for story-time.
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2002--2012
Books about a father’s love for his son:
The book cover on the left has the color of the sun permeating to show the heat of the
desert, a father and son in traditional dresses of a people in a far away land, and perhaps
a distant past. The book on the right, another beach scene, with blue skies and
comfortable yellow grasses and sand with soft rounded places looks windy but
comfortable. The scene on the left looks like it might require a lot of stamina to survive.
Which scene does an American child relate to as his own experience?
In an effort to try and find a single book with a black child on the cover at a
traditional beach vacation I started using the internet the way my students do, as a large
fishing net, with Google or Dogpile.com and tried every key word I knew to find a single
book. I was actually surprised to find any results but I did find one, A Beach Tail by
Karen Williams, and it is recently published. The soft round edges, with the warm
browns and tans, and the child large and centered but also engrossed in his play makes
this book a more likely grab and go choice for a child than Papa do you love me or Tar
Beach. If I had first gone to the Brown Bookshelf, I would have found it under a
Librarything list of recommended titles.
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Who is on the Cover?
2002--2012
This book is currently available only at Wal-Mart:
It gives me the same sense of warmth as some of the other beach books about children
and families. I cannot find this title available through Titlewave or Amazon, Barnes and
Noble or any other book site that I typically frequent for purchases at work. I would
have to make a special request to order this book as a state purchaser.
Lee & Low Publishing also has a book with biracial child characters, though it is hard to
tell by looking at the thumbnail cover, on a beach vacation.
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Who is on the Cover?
2002--2012
The book My cat copies me was written in Korea, translated and is now available in the
states. The book is fun, realistic, and yet entirely fictional. A little girl plays with her
cat, and her cat follows her around, copying her. The illustrations are clear and colorful
with fun feeling. The light colored sky in the background with the girl and the cat on top
of the book shelf feels light and happy, and despite the slanting, it feels safe, but
exciting. The distinct outline of the drawings is unique and gives a sense of precision
and stability. What a novel concept, a book with a Korean girl, who is just playing with
her cat! To obtain this book I had to purchase through Amazon myself and donate it to
my library.
Thank you Spike Lee and Kadir Nelson for drawing a book cover with an all American
theme of two kids playing with their puppy. In Please puppy, please we again see light
colors, a blue sky, and a sense of relaxation, stability and happiness. The puppy is
clearly in charge but that’s ok. Luckily for our students, it was available through
scholastic and we used book fair points to obtain it. And thank you for drawing these
children to look like human beings. As opposed to the following images, that makes me
wonder, who is drawing little girls to look like they have misshapen footballs for heads.
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Who is on the Cover?
2002--2012
The lime green color on the top left is reminiscent of puke colors and the girl’s body is
oddly shaped with broad shoulders and small hips and legs like one would draw a
caricature of a super hero. The second image is somewhat playful, the warm orange a
safe feel with mom in the background, hand on her hip with a broom in her blue robe a
promising start. However, the oddly large brow bone on the girl combined with a small
mouth makes her look like a cave girl child and not an average modern girl. The book on
the right is dark red, the color of blood, though reds can be vital and energetic, this red
is too close to the color of the children’s skin and makes a jarring brightness combined
with a muddied feeling. The blue and yellow shirts tell you there is love between the
children and a kindness in them, and hope reflected in the title, but with their
misshapen heads and indistinct features one wonders at their odds of success as average
kids who seem alone in the world. Where are the adults and why is this little girl being
encouraged to care for such a small child alone?
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Who is on the Cover?
2002--2012
Books Called Baby Talk are plentiful and the default for “baby” is:
What’s wrong with these choices? The books in isolation may seem fine, but as a group,
one starts to wonder. Why is this darker skinned baby more reminiscent of an alien
than a human? Why are the features drawn so ambiguously?
I don’t know anyone’s’ grandfather who looks like this, even an American Indian in
today’s school population.
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Who is on the Cover?
2002--2012
Scary covers
These covers are supposed to be scary. One is a book from a popular series about a boy
who has irrational fears of various people and places in his life. The black and blue
colors combined with shadows and odd shaped unbalanced edges give a feeling of
uneasiness the yellow and blue colors in the title and character however, reassure you
that it is a fun kind of scary.
Somehow the yellow light in this
picture isn’t quite as re-assuring.
The next cover gives the feeling that this person needs to learn to keep his mouth
shut. His mouth is open wider than is comfortable for him or anyone else and his big
round eyes look intense. The actual topic of this book is social activism. The book is not
one I have read; I intentionally didn’t read most of the books in my sampling to analyze
imagery without justification from the content of the books. I do find it an interesting
dichotomy that the image is one that screams literally of “please shut up” and the topic
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2002--2012
is social activism. This at first glance is the impression we give of how people who stand
up for others are viewed.
Books that hide black people’s faces
I can’t help but notice that hiding Norman’s face behind the Goldfish bowl changed the
central color from brown to sky blue the safe color.
The lone book with a
Native American girl on the cover is a beautiful cover, but you can’t see her face. It is no
accident that publishers look for ways to sell books to more people and at present, they
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have more luck if they can draw the average white person to the cover rather than have
them assume “this book isn’t for me”.
Image analysis is full of variables, and context is key, but in the day to day of our busy
lives, during selection for a librarian making purchases, choosing stories or student
selection for checkout these kinds of first impressions, fair or not, will happen more
often than most of us are even aware.
II.
WHO’S LOOKING AT THE COVER
Understanding the Publisher’s view
Publishers are in the business of selling books. Selling books is like any other business,
and it follows supply and demand, or at least perceived demand. Publishers commission
known writers and illustrators often, and accept new writers and illustrators that fit past
models of success. In the past, white faces on covers sold millions of copies and black
and brown faces on the covers sold in much fewer numbers. It makes sense that
publishers find themselves wondering how they can sell brown faces to all people and
not just to brown skinned people. Hence books that hide black faces and books with
ambiguous faces and light skinned faces or the binary of black and white faces are as
prevalent as authentically black and brown faces.
Children’s book sales have historically been institutionally driven with the bulk of
sales going to schools. Trade books are designed to appeal to children, and those who
supervise children, librarians, teachers, parents, and grandparents. The covers of books
are designed by a team, a director of design, an artist and a copy editor. The author has
very little say over the cover design, usually, and so this particular image is driven
almost solely by what is perceived to be sellable. If you work in a school library or
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children’s department you probably already know that, “Children are notorious for
judging books by their covers” (Horning). The best -selling children’s books in
September and October of 2013 were primarily books with animals or objects on the
cover, not people. The one book with a person depicted a white male. In “the 20 bestselling children’s books of all time” all but one picture book depicted animals or objects
on the covers, such as, The Very Hungry Caterpillar and The Pokey Little Puppy. The
one picture book with a picture of a person on the cover is Love you forever by Robert
Munsch depicting a little white male toddler. The chapter books in this list all depicted
white people, white males predominately.
In the article “Why hasn’t the number of multi-cultural books increased in eighteen
years” ten professionals were asked their opinion. The reasons given varied:

The shift from a primarily institutional market to a consumer market

Perceived desires of the consumer market

Authors of color have been affected disproportionately by the economic
downturn

Publishers reject manuscripts depicting middle class images of black families

The perception that “multi-cultural books” are not for all children but only for
children of color

People in publishing power are mostly from the same social circles and heritage
group

Consumer interest is high in fetish or mystical stories about American Indians
and low for modern stories.

People of color are not writing enough books
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
The public is not demanding what they really want

Nostalgia overrides our good sense in our own consumerism

People of color spend more money on books that mainstream publishers realize

Common core curriculum standards follow the status quo

Marketing is not a priority for books about people non-white people
Sarah Park went on to describe the current trend she see’s in publishing of books about
people who are of any heritage group other than European not marketed well, which in
turn doesn’t sell well, which then creates a self fulfilling prophecy and less books of the
type that doesn’t sell are published.
What kinds of changes are required to affect the publishers view? Do anti-racist
librarians have any power to affect this type of change? Perhaps we’ll gain some insight
next April when Tightrope Walk: Identity, Survival and the Corporate World in
African American Literature is published. Is the lone black voice in the publishing
world destined to go insane from the pressure? (AALBC)
Understanding the consumer’s view
The typical consumer buys what they like. Other reasons according to Bryan Eisenburg,
an online marketing pioneer for purchasing items, show what other factors may be
considered. Let’s explore how his model looks when applied to buying picture books:
Basic Needs – Board books for baby during the nesting phase of pregnancy.
Convenience – I’ve checked out Good Night Moon ten times from the library, it would
be easier if I owned it so we could read it every night without overdue fines.
Replacement – My copy of Green Eggs and Ham is falling apart and as pencil
drawings in it from my sister so I’ll buy a new copy for my child.
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Scarcity – My favorite book of fairy tales was out of print but I found a copy on EBay.
Prestige or Aspirational purchase – The author was signing the new Caldecott
Award Winning book at ALA so I bought a copy for my coffee table.
Emotional Vacuum – I always wanted a hard copy of The Littlest Angel but my mom
wouldn’t splurge our tight budget on picture books growing up.
Lower prices – Snowy Day used to cost 20 dollars but the local bookseller is having a
50% off sale.
Great Value – This unknown book was on the $5.00 table and it looked good enough
for five dollars with a lion on the cover.
Name Recognition – Even Bunting has a new book out.
Fad or Innovation – Everybody is reading Chester’s Masterpiece because the kids
chose it as a Golden Archer Nominee three years in a row.
Compulsory Purchase – Stevie was required for my History of children’s literature
class
Ego Stroking – My husband loves Charlie Brown so I bought the reprint of Charlie
Brown Valentine
Niche Identity – My family supports Green Bay Football so we have to have the latest
book published about the team.
Peer Pressure – I have family with biracial children so I’ll buy the Hello Goodbye
Window so their child will have a book to read when they come over.
The “Girl Scout Cookie Effect” - I bought the Coretta Scott King books for my
child’s school during a book sale because I knew it would benefit the library’s
fundraising efforts and I also thought it would help diversify the library selections.
Empathy – My good friend wrote a children’s book so I bought a copy.
Addiction – I love books, and I buy whatever I can at garage sales and goodwill and
auctions.
Fear – I bought my child a book about Trucks because I want to make sure he grows up
to be tough
Indulgence – I love picture books and any time I have extra cash I splurge. The
Napping House is a personal favorite and I have one copy to keep, one to read and a
couple extra to give as gifts.
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Reciprocity or Guilt – My sister always buys my kids books for Christmas so this year
I bought her kids some too.
Why do we buy books with black faces on the covers for our children or ourselves?

Our own children are black or biracial.

We are studying the topic.

We think the books will be “good for” our white children.

The book won an award.

The book was on sale.
How often do we buy the book because it is our favorite from when we were a kid? Is it
our favorite this year of all books published? Is it one of our many favorites and we
splurged and bought it because we love it so much. We bought it as a gift for someone
because we knew they would love it? We bought it because we think it will be a
collector’s item. We bought it because we knew it would create great coffee conversation
at our next dinner party. We bought it because everyone else was reading it. When will
the general public starts thinking of books with brown and black faces on the covers as
their favorite books from childhood?
Understanding today’s students and their view:
“Changing patterns of fertility and immigration have put the United States on a short
road to a population diversity never before experienced by any nation—a population in
which all races and ethnicities are part of minority groups that make up a complex
whole.” (Center for Public Education) We are a growing nation with a black population
that is growing in areas not typically thought of a dense areas for African Americans
such as Utah which had an increase percentage wise of 65.9 in the black population and
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Idaho with a change of 79.8. These children represent 400 first languages other than
English. Spanish language users make up seventy-nine percent of these ELL students.
One identified responsibility recommended for schools is “The need to address issues of
equity in resources among schools.
The soon to be minority of white children currently have 90% of the books and
still yet “the majority of the parents of [white children], no matter how kind and smart
and sweet they are, didn’t buy black books, dolls, or movies for their children. (MBB)
Teachers in my school often bypass books with black characters on the cover when
recommended as well, favoring the same books year after year. “It is …important for
white children to see characters of different races. “, they learn to see the sameness, and
so those other cultures are less seen as 'others.' "(Nelson/Blair) Madison studies show
that even though one quarter of children in schools are Latino only three percent of
children’s books are about Latino’s. Sometimes luck is on our side in the classroom, the
kindergarten class is thirty percent minority in our school, and I found a book with black
characters of which happened to look exactly like one student and shared his exact
name. The look on the child’s face, this child who had been a resistant reader, and
literally refused to participate for an entire year saw himself reflected in that story and
has been amazingly attentive since that time. He was so happy he practically jumped
out of his chair, which is typical of the age, but what a moment. Every child deserves
that moment. Critical thinking and learning about race and our place in history is vitally
important, but without a base of security, these conversations will not go very far. Jason
Low of Lee and Low books has this to say, “Dialogues about race have to happen early
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and often so our children's futures will diverge from our past. Talk is an important
starting point, but along with these dialogues must come action” and he’s absolutely
right. However, dialogue again is based on comfort and trust. If your students, all of
them, white, black, brown, and tan are going to trust you, their environment needs to
say, “This is a safe place”. It also has to say something other than, “every time I see a
black face on a book it’s going to be a scary uncomfortable story”. Providing books like
Cold or Hot by Jacqueline Sweeney, and Bedtime Fun by
Barbara Newkirk, can help balance the collection so that when the subject of race or
racism does come up, perhaps the students will not associate those negative feelings
with black faces, but with the reality of the problem we are all still facing.
The librarians view - Collection Development
Does purposefully identifying a deficiency, purchasing books to fill it, and displaying
and promoting said books follow the definition of anti-racism? Is there a stopping
point? How do you measure this? If you have a school with 10% minority does 10% of
your library need to represent this percentage? What if your school has 50% population
black and Latino? Does your library need to be exactly 50% books with black and Latino
representation? How many should be fiction?
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This is a question that cannot be answered quantitatively unfortunately, how much
easier it would be if we as librarians could put a number on it and fix it. The questions
we must ask ourselves to make these judgments however can help move us toward an
anti-racist library.
o Are fiction books (not historical fiction) with black faces just for black
students?
o Can you have “too many” books with white faces on them in a library?
o What have you done in your library to balance your collection?
o Who helps you evaluate and answer these questions for your library?
a) Materials selection
Come up with a plan for measuring something for your library community. You know
your population. Don’t just eyeball the people, if you work in a school, you may use
Powerschool or some other program that lists demographics. Although these statistics
may be private you can view them yourself and determine if you have had a bigger shift
than you realized. Create a team of diverse people to help you. Are there any teachers
who are Latino, or African American you can call on to be a part of your team to create
book orders? Find out their priorities. Sometimes people are resistant to being on
another committee but if you use interlibrary loan to get a stack of books you are
interested in purchasing you could set up a voting box with the titles in question. Find
out which books appeal to your students and teachers. Do you have a teen advisory
board? Ask them to do surveys or their own statistical measurements and determine
deficiencies and then make recommendations. Ask your staff and students the hard
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questions about “who books are for” You don’t have to do this alone, and every decision
in every library will be a little bit different.
Review services and awards are a common source for librarians to refer to when making
tough choices within a tight budget. If you order monthly, perhaps one month out of the
year could be ordering from a new publisher like Lee & Low books or making a list of
titles from Amazon or Follett or Barnes and Noble that you found on the Brown
Bookshelf or CCBC’s lists. Make sure you are reading recommendations outside of the
standard for populations that aren’t well represented by the standard.
b) Programming
Do you do programming? If you are a school library perhaps you are participating in a
Caldecott 75th anniversary event this year or maybe you have a “night in the library” fun
evening with students or a book fair with scholastic. What kind of programming could
you do that would highlight the needs of the under-represented? Can your Teen advisory
board represent younger student’s interests too by having a car wash and using the
money to purchase books that your general budget doesn’t allow for from one of your
preferred small publishers? What about a week where everything in the library is
backwards, one library had a “read every picture book on the shelf” month? Could you
have a “read every brown book on the shelf month”? What about a holiday such as
Valentine’s day, it happens in February which is Black History Month. Perhaps you
could wrap up books like presents with only loving happy historical moments in Black
History? Can you find those moments?
c) Staffing
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Is your library staffed with mostly white women? Mine is, I’m white and so is the aid.
Who subs for you when you are absent? If you work in the public sector, who works the
desk? Next time you have an opening can you identify at least three qualified candidates
who are not white or speak a language other than English? Do you hire staff who speak
Spanish if your population has a high percentage of Spanish speakers? Do you hire
student workers of color? Do you ask for substitutes who might gain job experience by
working for you who are from under-represented communities? Just the other day I
had a sub for a sub working for me and my first knee jerk reaction was, “It will take
longer to train him than to do it myself”. However because I wanted to make sure they
got paid for their hours and maintain friendly relations I gritted my teeth and showed
him what the person who is normally there does during her time. I then left him with an
easy task and assumed he would come to me in a few minutes ready to leave early. To
my surprise, he not only did the work in record time, but was teaching himself the
Dewey Decimal System in hopes of being asked back to sub in the library in the future. I
was so impressed by his willingness to learn that it overcame my busy anxiety reaction
and we talked about his background, which he brought up himself, about being from
Cuba, and how it was to move to the States and learn to fit in here. On top of that he is a
deaf man, and I realized, if I don’t give him a chance to do some work now as a sub in
the library, who will in the future? If the job becomes available someday and I had
brushed him off he may never consider working in a library again. If he learns the job
and then later applies he becomes a viable candidate. And what do we gain whether he
ever works permanently here or not? Every time he is in the room, and the students
come, they see that a library isn’t just a place where white women call all of the shots.
And I gain the experience of learning from him how he views the setting. It isn’t easy to
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work with people who are not just like us, I admit, a person who has my own
communication style, and basic understanding of “how it’s done” makes my work more
efficient which is my comfort zone, but is efficiency my only priority?
For those people who read this and say, “We can’t just look for candidates of color we
have to see who applies for the job” I say “nonsense”. People get hired every day
because someone calls them up and says “I want you to apply for this job”. It’s
happened to me, and people I know. If we can do that, we can recruit interview
candidates for the job from any University, social networking site like Linkedin, or
professional organization like your local library associations.
d) Other
What other opportunities can you think of to make your library more welcoming to
under-represented groups? · Do you ever talk about race in the library or book club? Do
you invite authors from these groups to speak in your library or on Skype? Do you ask
small publishers if they have fundraisers that you might choose instead of a mainstream
book fair twice a year, why not one a year and a couple of smaller fundraisers the other
part of the year.
e) De-selection and Lesson Planning
Weeding is a big subject these days with library directors in more than one instance
losing their jobs over issues that include weeding choices. A critical librarian who uses
the CREW method knows that weeding is a complex process that requires many steps
and a lot of thought and yet we do have to eventually prune things down to find space
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for getting newer titles on the shelves. Here are a few thoughts for dealing with weeding
titles with non-white faces on the covers.
a) Native American titles – many of these need to be pruned and you can go to a
Debbie Reese’s website to see if these titles are considered inaccurate, offensive,
out of date or otherwise not recommended. Rather than throwing them out
however, why not make a kit with a guide for discussing why these books need to
be removed from general circulation. You can combine this with movies and
include videos such as War Paint and Wigs discussing how Indians are portrayed
in film.
b) Classics like Snowy Day and Stevie – No need to weed, it has been a long time
but these books are still relevant today and have historical significance. If you
find they are just “too old” for general circulation you can buy a new copy so that
it is fresh, and or keep them on a special shelf in your office for those educational
moments, but so far most people still like to read Keats and Steptoe so keep them
on the shelf.
c) Little Bill and books from the nineties – if they are still circulating by all means
leave them on the shelf. If the older titles with the older art design are not
circulating try deselecting them in favor of the newer design from the television
show. I still hear students and teachers today talk about the influence Cosby and
his work has had in their lives both white and black and until there is a new series
to take its place there is no need to get rid of it.
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d) Little Black Sambo and Babar and books by Ingri and Edgar Parin D’Aulaire
other books with racist images may be deselected or again, see a) make a kit with
a discussion about why these images were printed and how to interpret them.
There are ways to discuss the issue without forcing an opinion upon a student.
Although it is tempting to tell them “what racist is or isn’t” a student who is
taught to think critically will without being lead to it.
e) Suggested publishers
f) “Publishers/Imprints Dedicated to Multi-Cultural Children’s Literature
g) Amistad
Award-winning literary fiction and non-fiction. Primarily picture books to middle
grade.
h) Children’s Book Press
Multi-cultural books with a special emphasis on picture books and early readers.
Focus includes African American, Latino, Asian American, Latino and Native
American.
i) Dafina YA
Multi-cultural popular fiction with books centering primarily on African American,
Latino and Caucasian characters.
j) Jump At The Sun
Award-winning literary fiction and non-fiction ranging from picture books to
young adult.
k) Just Us Books
Wide range of Afro-centric picture books, chapter books and some young adult.
l) Kimani Tru YA
Multi-cultural popular fiction, many of them series books, focused primarily on
African American characters.
m) Lee & Low
Children’s books ranging from PB to Young Adult with a special focus on multicultural including African American, Latino, Asian, Native American, and Middle
Eastern.” (The Brown Bookshelf)
(Permission requested to reproduce list but not yet received)
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Suggested titles from the twentieth century
Toddlers
Summer Fun
Shonda book is not in worldcat? But is available on Amazon.
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Imagination and play
School & Sports
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Friends & Family
Fairy Tales & Folk Tales
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Bedtime
Winter Fun
Fall & Winter Holidays
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Gardening
Occupations
Math & Science
Moving
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Out of Print Titles to watch for
For a complete list visit Library Thing:
For More good titles with tan, black and brown faces with light, moderate or heavy
cultural and historical themes visit The Brown Bookshelf Library and see “Shelftalker’s”
list on Librarything. http://thebrownbookshelf.com/brown-bookshelf-library/
What Not to Weed:
It would be impossible to tell you specifically what books not to weed in your libraries
but here are some examples of series and titles you might consider more deeply for their
significance before weeding and give more thought to the discard options available.












Little Bill book series
Dora and Diego book series
Afro Bets book series
Big Cowboy Western by Anna Herbert Scott
Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats
Stevie by John Steptoe
Octopus Hug by Laurence P. Pringle
The Wedding by Angela Johnson
Kevin and His Dad by Irene Smalls
10, 9, 8 By Molly Bang
Joshua by the sea
Because you’re lucky
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
Feast for 10
And other books by great authors and illustrators like the above if you have nothing yet
to replace it with by topic.
If you must weed theses books, although we often try to avoid weeded books going to
classrooms as we follow a guideline of keeping up to date books in the hands of students,
it could be a great way to diversify our classroom libraries as well to make sure these
types of books go to teachers and students rather than the recycling bin, or the local
goodwill if you work in a school library. The public library generally puts discards in
sales, gives them to better world books or lists them online for sale. However, in this
case you might consider a charitable donation to your local school for titles which may
help increase the volume of brown and black faces on the shelves of school libraries with
smaller and smaller budgets every year especially with a trend toward purchasing nonfiction for common core standards.
Conclusion
As librarians we can address this imbalance in our libraries with the resources currently
available to us which in turn will create the demand in institutions that will be noticed
by publishers. Students who become more comfortable with books with black and
brown faces on the covers will influence parents to buy more of the same which in turn
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can cause publishers to take notice and create more books to fill these requests. We have
the knowledge, the tools to find resources, and the judgment to fill our libraries with
what our patrons and students want and need. Neutrality is not an option when it comes
to racism in our society. We are either part of the racist system or a vehicle for change.
This is the face of a happy child who found herself on the cover of a book which
contained content she could identify with. Amy Hodgepodge is a chapter book but the
picture books with biracial girls in them, like The Hello Goodbye Window were not to
her liking. She said the illustrations were “messy” and she didn’t like to read it. Amy
Hodgepodge however was interesting to her and she happened to magically matching
dress the same as Amy’s on the cover. On “dress like a book character day”, in second
grade, she was able to participate and wrote a wonderful report for school. The children
in her class who are white saw her as an equal and not as a victim. I look forward to the
day when these children are in positions of power in the world and are able to make
decisions based on a different set of factors that create a new broader comfort zone. It is
our job to guide them and give them the skills to expand their reach in this twenty-first
century.
Appendixes
Appendix A – Excel Spreadsheet of 614 Follett Titlewave picture books from 2005
sampling on U of I – I drive
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sftp://nflemin2@login1.illinois.edu/homei/users/nflemin2/people_html/Follett2005fil
tered3.xlsx
Appendix B – CCBC Logs AA 2003
Appendix C- CCBC Logs AA 2004
Appendix D – CCBC Logs AA 2005
Appendix E – CCBC Logs AA 2006
Appendix F – CCBC Logs AA 2007
Appendix G- CCBC Logs AA 2008
Appendix H – CCBC Logs AA 2009
Appendix I – CCBC Logs AA 2010
Appendix J – CCBC Logs AA 2011
Appendix K – CCBC Logs AA 2012
Resources used
“
Resources consulted
Add:
Christine’s Comments
Books about Animals………yes there are many and that may or may not address issues
with race and gender but that in my work I am looking at people. (I think I did say
this….see comment above)
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Say up front, discussing images by using text is hard….and that is why I’m using Molly
Bangs strategies to talk about pictures because this kind of analysis is new and so this
will help get a basis for discussion. (Where to put this…..in the imagery section?)
Nancy Larrick’s study…mention it has been going on a long time. (Introduction?)
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