"The more we seed cross-cultural books and other media in our homes, the more kids will see it as “normal” when they leave home and see people different from themselves at school, at the grocery store, at daycare—that everyone, no matter their ethnicity, is the hero in his or her own story. This applies no matter what our family’s ethnicity—though kids of color are already getting white culture through the media they consume, particularly TV, where so few people of color are stars in their own stories. If they appear, they’re usually best friends, sidekicks, villains, etc. And as we all know, according to Hollywood, the Black Dude Dies First and Vasquez Always Dies. We have so many—so, so, so many—books that cover slavery and the Civil War and the Civil Rights movement, but we don’t have nearly enough books that feature the everyday lives of minority kids, or the little-known heroes of color of other eras and countries."
— Stacy Whitman, editorial director of Tu Books, on “Diversifying our family’s reading: children’s and young adult books” (via diversityinya)
(via aka14kgold)
