Catching Up

THERE SEEMS TO BE A LACK of cultural diversity in contemporary children's literature. Apparently, children's books in general do not look enough like america. Not enough minority characters. This finding is based on normal proceedures, comparing ethnic percentages throughout the general population with pictures and characters in books.

This result surprised me, because over the years, i have spent a little time looking at children's books, and my impression had been that ethnic diversity was increasing, and sufficiently representative. But evidently not. Shows what i know.

Publishers insist that there is only one force which drives the market for books of any sort, children's or other, and that is, public, popular demand. The ethnic make up of recently published books overall is merely a freflection of what sells best. Its hard to argue with that. But to what extent do people independently choose, and to what extent are they told what to buy?

Minorities have been slow coming to the table, slow to be invited to the table, in every aspect of american life, but, through persistance and the force of moral rectitude have generally arrived, at different rates in different fields. Each successive inclusionary change has improved society.

Computers don't seem to be replacing books, so much as augmenting them, helping traditional books on paper retain popularity.  Reading may well be entering a renaissance; it about time, during the latter half of tne twentieth and first portion of the twenty first, literacy rates in america have been steadily declining.  It may be time to reverse that trend, with the help of computers.

Tomorrow's children's books will doubtless look more like america than today's children's books. Some segments of the culture catch up faster than others.