Racial and Cultural Representation in Children’s & Young Adult Library Collections

Abstract

Children’s books have a long history of centering whiteness, with white characters as the primary if not only characters in the vast majority of these stories. According to the Cooperative Children’s Book Center, as recently as 2002, just 5% of children’s books published in the United States featured a Black main character (2019). In 2018, racial representation in children’s books showed only marginal improvement with American Indian/First Nations characters in 1% of children’s books published that year, Latinx 5%, Asian Pacific Islanders/Asian Pacific Americans 7%, African/African American 10%, Animals/Other 27%, and White characters at 50% (2019).