DIVERSITY IN PUBLISHING IS ON THE RISE School librarians/media specialists overwhelmingly agree that it’s important to have a book collection with diverse points of view. In a 2018 survey by the School Library Journal , 7 95 percent of librarians/media specialists said this was important, and 81 percent said it was “very important.” Sixty-eight percent of librarians/media specialists said they’re buying more books with diverse characters.
In the same survey, librarians/media specialists also indicated that finding high-quality books with diverse points of view can be challenging. Nearly three- fourths of respondents said they’d like more authentic portrayals of Black or African American people in the books they buy, but 25 percent said these were hard to find. Sixty-two percent of librarians/media specialists said they’d like more books with disabled characters, and an equal percentage said these were hard to find. The Children’s Cooperative Book Center (CCBC) at the University of Wisconsin School of Education tracks diversity in children’s publishing. From 1994 to 2015, there was very little change in the market, with only 10 to 15 percent of children’s books written by or about people of color.
Compared to last year, how many books with diverse characters has your library purchased?
2%
30%
68%
More Same Fewer
80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0%
Black Multiracial Disabled LGBTQ+ Asian
Latinx
Native/ Indigenous
In demand
Hard to find
4 Rising Voices White Paper
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