I read an
interview of two children’s book agents in which they discussed diversity (or
lack thereof) in children’s literature. http://blog.leeandlow.com/2013/11/06/literary-agents-discuss-the-diversity-gap-in-publishing/ One agent
made mention of the fact that the vast majority of children’s book authors are
well-educated, white women with enough of a financial cushion in their lives to
be able to dedicate the time and money to pursuing an extremely financially
unrewarding … well, some are looking at it as a career, others as a hobby, I
suppose. Anyway, this agent was not surprised that so many books were about
white middle class children, because people tend to write what they know.
And
that’s the default setting. I find it in my own writing, and even in my drawing
– the kids I draw may have wider noses on the whole than the average white kid,
but for the sake of color variety, I often give them blond or red hair, when
the vast majority of people on this earth have dark hair. So it’s not
representative. Worse yet, when I’m in “the zone” painting (and thus, not
really thinking intellectually about diversity in children’s literature), I
have a default go-to skin color, which is so disappointing of an impulse of
mine. There I go again, mixing up a creamy peachy pink on the palette. Please.
My skin isn’t that color, so why am I painting with it? I’m going to make
a concerted effort to draw more diverse faces in my future sketchings. Captain Obvious here, but people of all types should be adequately represented in literature. The fact that this sentence must even be stated is a sad state of affairs indeed. /end soapbox
