We Need Diverse Books

Windows, Sliding Glass Doors, and Mirrors

The call for more diverse books is not new. In 1990, literacy advocate Rudine Sims Bishop wrote that, “Books are sometimes windows, offering views of worlds that may be real or imagined, familiar or strange. These windows are also sliding glass doors, and readers have only to walk through in imagination to become part of whatever world has been created or recreated by the author. When lighting conditions are just right, however, a window can also be a mirror. Literature transforms human experience and reflects it back to us, and in that reflection we can see our own lives and experiences as part of a larger human experience. Reading, then, becomes a means of self-affirmation, and readers often seek their mirrors in books.” Do the books in your classroom and school mirror the diverse population in your school, communities, and the wider world? 

Evolving the Canon       

Publishing diverse stories and getting them into classrooms and schools is only part of the diverse book movement. Many teachers have access to more diverse books but receive limited if any professional learning on how to support student discussions around stereotypes, varying cultural perspectives, questions of identity, and tough topics. It’s not surprising then that the instructional default often becomes the literary canon, which is comprised of very few diverse authors, stories or characters. Even as the diversity in our schools has rapidly changed in the past 50 years, the literary canon has not. As a nation we are still hooked on the classics that only tell part of our “common experience.” Imagine if we let the literary canon truly “mirror” who we are as a nation and the whole story of our shared experience.