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•••DEI Books

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Books

The most recent Black Lives Matter movement has encouraged many to look towards broadening their perspective. While it can feel like a whirlwind of information and difficult in knowing where to start, here are a few books that have helped our therapists dive deeper into their own biases.

 

 

The cover of the book How to Be An Antiracist by Ibram X. KendiThe cover of the book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander, a New York Times BestsellerThe cover of the book So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo, the #1 New York Times BestsellerThe cover of the book White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin DiAngeloThe cover of the book The Color of Law: A forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein

 

Child Corner

When talking to children, it can be helpful to have stories and books to help with your conversation. Here are a handful of options.

 

The cover of the children's book All Are Welcome, written by Alexandra Penfold and illustrated by Suzanne Kaufman, which pictures children of many ethnicities and cultural backgrounds walking to school The cover of the children's book The Skin You Live In, written by Michael Tyler and illustrated by David Lee Csicsko, featuring cartoon images of diverse children The cover of the children's book I am Enough by Grace Byers, illustrated by Keturah Bobo, featuring an African-American girl with glorious natural hair The cover of the children's book I Am Brown, written by Ashok Banker and illustrated by Sandy Prabhat, which features a cartoon happy girl with brown skin and hair The cover of the middle grade graphic novel Class Act, which shows an African-American student juggling his grades, schoolwork, friends, and sports The cover of the children's book Black Is a Rainbow Color by Angela Joy, illustrated by Ekua Holmes, which pictures an African-American girl smilingThe cover of the children's book Oona, written by Kelly DiPucchio and illustrated by Raissa Figueroa, which pictures an African-American mermaid with glorious natural hair

 

Diverse Book Finder

The official logo of Diverse BookFinder, whose goal is to identify and explore multicultural picture books

 

Diversebookfinder.org is a comprehensive collection of children’s picture books featuring Black and Indigenous people and People of Color (BIPOC) since 2002.

They have collected and analyzed more than 3000 picture books.

 

Checklist for Reading Children’s Literature

This checklist was created by Biracial Bookworms and is based on the Guide for Selecting Anti-Bias Children’s Books. It is designed to help you verify for yourself whether a book is using an anti-bias lens.

  1. Check the Illustrations: Look for common harmful/undermining stereotypes
  2. Look for Tokenism: This is the “one only” message. Regularly seeing only “one” person of any group in a book teaches young children about who is more/less important.
  3. Look for Invisibility: What children do not see in their books also teaches them about who matters and who doesn’t in our society.
  4. Check the Story Line and the Relationships Between People: Even if a book shows visual diversity, the story line may carry biases related to how it handles power relationships among people of various identities.
  5. Look at Messages About Different Lifestyles: Check to see if there are negative value judgements implied about ways of life that differ from the dominant culture or economic class.
  6. Consider the Effects on Children’s Self and Social Identities
  7. Look for Books About Children and Adults Engaging in Actions for Change
  8. Consider the Author’s or Illustrator’s Background and Perspective.
  9. Watch for Loaded Words.
  10. Look at the Copyright Date.
  11. Assess the Appeal of the Story and Illustrations to Young Children.
  12. Check for age appropriateness.
Date:

October 26, 2020

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