Evaluating Children’s Books for Bias
Since one of my Capstone projects is to write a grant with Jacqueline in hopes of buying more culturally diverse books for our school’s bookroom, I was anxious to read this article. The article mentioned guidelines to look for that had not even crossed my mind when picking out an appropriate book. One of the problems the author of this article considered to be the biggest was omission. The author noted that many times an entire group may be excluded from a collection, which implies that the group is insignificant. We read an article in class mentioning the number of Asian cultures. One of the questions one should ask when looking at children’s books is whether or not the book portrays diversity among Asian Americans. I thought that was good to point out. The article also mentioned that Asian Americans should not be portrayed as model minorities, which made another connection to our past article. I liked the statement that “every person from every culture should be portrayed as an individual with unique strengths, weaknesses, interests, lifestyles, and beliefs.” When mentioning the language in an appropriate children’s book, the words papoose, squaw, and docile are examples that the author of this article listed as offensive terms. There were many other terms listed that I understood to be offensive, but had no idea the three I listed were considered offensive. I will definitely keep this article handy as Jacqueline and I prepare to write our grant!
