a) political

Children’s literature is not neutral. It can be educational and entertaining, but books for kids also tell us something about our society and ourselves. As I wrote in my last HuffPo essay,

There’s clearly a direct link between the misrepresentation of Black youth as inherently criminal and the justification given by those who brazenly take their lives. The publishing industry can’t solve this problem, but the relative lack of children’s books by and about people of color nonetheless functions as a kind of “symbolic annihilation.” Despite the fact that the majority of school-age children in the US are now kids of color, the US publishing industry continues to produce books that overwhelmingly feature white children only. The message is clear: the lives of kids of color don’t matter.

I’m not a citizen so I can’t vote—and that stings a bit when I look at yesterday’s election results. But even if…