Am I diverse yet? Why there are no Jews in diverse books

If you've been out of the loop in the world of children's publishing, you may not be aware that the big, huge deal right now is Diverse Books. The battle cry for this movement is "We need diverse books."  Diverse books are good because they show kids "people who look like themselves" in the pages of children's literature.

Google "diverse books" and you'll see all kinds of cute pictures of kids--utterly heartwarming.  This is a Very Good Thing, as far as I’m concerned.

Here are a few examples:

(From We Need Diverse Books website)

(From The JJK Blog)

(From the We Need Diverse Books Indiegogo page)

Cute, right?  All of them are cute.  Just to recap: what do we see

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Are you racist – and you don’t even know it? 3 easy ways to fix it.

You know you’re not racist.  But do your readers know it?

Check your writing for signs of these 3 mistakes.  They’re probably there unintentionally, but rest assured that readers will find them – and take it personally, even if you didn’t mean any harm.

Be prepared to root out these problems wherever you find them.  Let’s try to create books that accurately reflect children’s reality, regardless of their skin colour or socioeconomic status.

Only one, or Tokenism

I’m sure you’ve seen this one before:  all the characters in a story are white… except one.  You can see the one black, or Asian, or East Indian, character hanging out in all the illustrations.  Maybe it’s one character in a wheelchair, or a girl in a hijab.  Or one character with some other type of difference, whatever it may be.

Yes, diversity is important.  But that doesn’t mean throwing in a single character of a particular “type,” simply to serve the goal of diversity.

QUICK FIX:

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