Sunday, December 20, 2015

Dreaming of Books: The diversity I want to see

These are the diverse books I'd like to see available for purchase.
    Realistic fiction featuring diverse girls, specifically Latina. My girls love authors like Lauren Myracle, Wendy Mass, etc. that feature middle grade girls dealing with life, friends, family, etc. If there's just a little romance, that's popular too. However, while some offer the "diverse group" characters (each character from a different ethnicity) there are very few books with one main protagonist who isn't white. They've got to have commercial covers though! By which I mean, DEFINITELY feature the protagonists on the cover, but they can't be artistic - please use photographs! Yes, my predominantly white patrons WILL check out books with POC on the covers.
    • Diana Lopez's two titles are good, Confetti Girl and Ask my mood ring how I feel. Very popular with all my girls.
    • A couple others with Black or biracial protagonists, The Blossoming Universe of Violet Diamond and Wilson's memoir, Brown Girl Dreaming. Also very popular.
    More funny books about boys who are diverse. Where is the Black Wimpy Kid? The Hispanic Big Nate? EllRay Jakes is awesome, but it's too young for most of these readers and I struggle to get kids to pick it up. I don't necessarily have kids asking for this, but I would love to add some diversity to the notebook novel genre and I absolutely know they would fly off the shelves. Why don't diverse kids get to be funny too?

    I'm working on updating the teen nonfiction, which is a small browsing collection. I'm not sure exactly how to describe this one, but...books like Child Called It and Soul Surfer but with diverse protagonists, especially Hispanic teens of both genders. My teens love memoirs with dramatic stories, current issues, and inspirational stories and it would be amazing to have more with diverse protagonists that are short and accessible to reluctant readers and get them thinking about real, contemporary teens and their lives.
    • Pregnancy Project by Gaby Rodriguez is great; it discusses issues of how girls, especially Hispanic girls, and teen pregnancy are viewed and treated.
    • The Naked Truth by Marvelyn Brown is good too, although it's a little harder to check out b/c some parents object to the title and the implied nudity on the cover.
    Read-alikes for Simone Elkeles' Perfect Chemistry trilogy. I have gotten so many teens hooked on reading with this trilogy - and adults too, who told me they don't normally read. I don't understand why more of my neighboring libraries don't own it!

    1 comment:

    Anamaria (bookstogether) said...

    What a fantastic selection of books! Confetti Girl and Blossoming Universe are two of my favorites for this kind of "everyday" diversity.