Black Faces in Kiddie Lit

 

            Martin Luther King Day is a great time to make your home library multicultural. If you want to raise a child who's as free from prejudice as possible, it's a great idea to go out of your way to have books in your home that show kids of all skin colors. That way, your child will learn a little about other children whose skin may be a little different color, but who are very interesting and loveable all the same - since we are, on balance, all the same.

 

            If young children associate snuggling with Mom or Dad with books, and associate brown or black faces pictured in those books with warm, happy times reading, it gives them a great start at getting along with other people, even years and decades later.

 

            You can teach a little basic history, and prevent bias and stereotypes in your child before they get a chance to get implanted. Some of these stories don't directly have anything to do with race, but quietly emphasize common ground, and introduce the themes of friendship and acceptance, which are keys for all ages.

 

            For African-American parents, there may be no more important task of your day than bedtime reading to your child, starting in infancy and continuing through grade school. Note that a study by Harvard's Ronald F. Ferguson showed that black middle-class children watch twice as much TV as their white counterparts. That may explain why the black children of college-educated parents do significantly worse on standardized reading tests than white children in similar families.

 

            Some suggestions:

 

            Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?

            Bill Martin Jr.

            The "climax" at the end shows a brown-faced woman.

 

            A Chair For My Mother

            Vera B. Williams

            Rosa and her grandmother save their loose change so that Rosa's mother can have a chair to sink into after a hard day at her waitressing job.

 

            The Snowy Day

            Ezra Jack Keats

            This sweet, gentle book shows an African-American child having fun on a snowy day. Look for other picture books by Keats, who was the first to break the color line with mainstream children's books featuring nonwhite main characters.

 

            Little Blue and Little Yellow

            Leo Lionni

            Two blobs of color demonstrate the beauty of friendship.

 

            Here are suggested books for infants and toddlers, many with African-American characters in them, from the Oakland, Calif., public library:

 

            http://www.oaklandlibrary.org/links/kids/Booklists/babiestoddlers.html

 

            Here are some listed by a reference website on black heritage issues:

 

            http://www.melanet.com/watoto/book_list.html