Fairrosa Press

According to the Cooperative Children’s Book Center (CCBC), of the 3200 children’s books they received/categorized in the year 2013, the multicultural “picture” looks like this:

(I added the %’s)
BUT — this is presuming that all children’s books are somewhat “ethnicity” based — which, I imagine, is FAR from the truth — there must have been plenty of story books with spiders, frogs, pigs, chickens, etc. as “characters” or “topics” and nonfiction books on neurosciences, soccer techniques, buildings, chemistry 101, etc.

So, I’m going to wait for more detailed numbers from CCBC (if they keep count…to update my percentages and analysis.) — SECOND VERSION of this post.

• 93 books had significant African or African American content <– less than 3%
• 67 books were by Black authors and/or illustrators <– 2%
(While the population of African Americans were around 12.6 % in the 2010 Census — fcl.)
(More books ABOUT African American topics or people than BY African American authors)
(If to reflect the population closely, there should have been about 500 books either about or by…)

• 33 books had American Indian themes, topics, or characters <– 1%
• 18 books were by American Indian authors and/or illustrators <– 0.5%
(While the population of Native Americans were around 0.9% in the 2010 Census — fcl.)
(More books ABOUT American Indian topics or people than BY Native American authors)
(percentage-wise, there are more books about Native American topics than the percentage of the population.)
(If to reflect the population closely, there should have been about 32 books either about or by…)

• 58 books had significant Asian/Pacific or Asian/Pacific American content <– 2%
• 85 books were by authors and/or illustrators of Asian/Pacific heritage <– 2.5%
(While the population of Asian/Pacific Island Americans were around 4.8 %)
(More books BY Asian American authors than ABOUT Asian American topics or people.)
(If to reflect the population closely, there should have been about 150 books either about or by…)

• 57 books had significant Latino content <– 1.8 %
• 48 books were by Latino authors and/or illustrators <– 1.5%
(While the population of Latino Americans were around 16.4 % in the 2010 Census — fcl.)
(More books ABOUT Latino American topics or people than BY Latino American authors.)
(If to reflect the population closely, there should have been about 500 books either about or by…)

Thinking about making an infograph to show the percentages and not just the raw numbers. — FIRST VERSION OF THIS POST