Over the weekend the New York Times published two important pieces that addressed the overall whiteness of America’s children’s books. In “Where Are People of Color in Children’s Books?” longtime African-American young adult author Walter Dean Myers detailed his experiences in the industry. In “The Apartheid of Children’s Literature”, Myers’ son Christopher writes about the barriers to inclusion that he’s experienced as an illustrator.
What prompted both pieces was a recent study by the Cooperative Children’s Book Center at the University of Wisconsin. According to those researchers, of 3,200 children’s books published last year, only 93 were about black people.
2013 wasn’t just an off year. This infographic looks back at 18 years of children’s book publishing and illustrates just how few books are published each year by or about people of color.