Early Childhood Education: Representation of Diverse Identities in Children’s Books (2021)

In Early Childhood Education, creating community through inclusive representation is an important anti-bias principle, and is part of best practice. In my Language and Literacy course, we address unconscious bias in the publishing industry by discussing this graphic, which illustrates diversity, or lack thereof, in children’s picture books. Students discuss what the lack of representation in children’s picture books means for our teaching practice, as well as the impact of a biased classroom library on how it shapes a child’s view of themselves and others. An extension activity is that each student goes back to their classroom libraries to examine their own titles, and we have large and small group discussions about their findings, as well as examine anti-bias resources for adding new/different titles.