Blog
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Watch the Red Carpet Interviews from the Children's Choice Book Awards!
Meet the 8th annual Children’s Choice Book Awards winners at CNN.com!
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First Book's Stories For All Project™ Arms Educators With Diverse, Inclusive Children's Books to Fuel Learning, Promote Educational Equity
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Educational outcomes improve when children have access to books in which they see their lives reflected. They become more engaged and enthusiastic readers, a critical step to succeeding …
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Children's Book Week 2015 #storylines: Laurie Ann Thompson
Our final quote is by Ghanaian athlete and activist Emmanuel Ofosu Yeboah, via Laurie Ann Thompson’s picture-book biography, Emmanuel’s Dream (Schwartz & Wade/Random House Children’s Books, 2015): See other quotes …
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Children's Book Week 2015 #storylines: Ellen Oh
Celebrate what makes you one-of-a-kind with this quote from Ellen Oh’s The Prophecy (HarperCollins, 2013): See other quotes in the series, and share your favorites! Quote #1: Frances Hodgson Burnett, …
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Children's Book Week 2015 #storylines: Kwame Alexander
Encouraging words from Newbery Winner Kwame Alexander’s The Crossover (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014): See other quotes in the series, and share your favorites! Quote #1: Frances Hodgson Burnett, A Little …
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2015 Comstock and Wanda Gág Read Aloud Book Award Winners Announced
Eighteen regional teachers and librarians, along with Minnesota State University Moorhead students read aloud 286 picture books to 21,988 children during the year. The winners and honor books were selected …
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CBLDF’s Comics Connector Builds A Bridge Between Libraries, Educators, and Comics Creators!
For Immediate ReleaseContact: Charles.Brownstein@cbldf.org Comic Book Legal Defense Fund continues the celebration of Children’s Book Week by launching its newest resource – the Comics Connector! CBLDF’s Comics Connector is a directory resource that connects educators and librarians with creators, …
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News-O-Matic Daily News App Is Just for Kids
News-O-Matic inspires children to be engaged and informed citizens. Readers can discover ways to take action within their community, or share their thoughts and questions with a worldwide network of …
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Children's Book Week 2015 #storylines: Leila Sales
Take pride in your individuality with this line from Leila Sales’ heart-pounding YA novel This Song Will Save Your Life (Farrar, Straus and Giroux/Macmillan Children’s, 2013): See other quotes in …
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Get Caught Reading Comic Books, Challenged Books and Other Must Reads
WASHINGTON, D.C. — What do Archie, Fone Bone, Hip Hop Family Tree, Usagi Yojimbo and the Peanuts gang have in common? These comic book icons have all been “caught reading.” This …
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Mirrors and Windows
Contributed to CBC Diversity by Delia Sherman
It’s 1961. I’m 10, and in bed reading a book. My mother isn’t telling me to go outside and play because, first, we live on the 11th floor in an apartment building in New York City, and second, because playing outside always makes me wheeze.
The book I’m reading could be anything—though, if I’m really sick, it’s likely to be The Swiss Family Robinson. The Swiss Family is mostly male and much older than I, but the practical details of their island life and the girl who has built her own house all by herself are endlessly fascinating to me.
This is my special comfort book, but I also love The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood and the Narnia series and the biography of Eleanor of Aquitaine from Mama’s nightstand, The Wind in the Willows, Nancy Drew, and A Wrinkle in Time. As an adopted only child, I find books about big, warm families of colorful siblings exotic and fascinating. But I like Little Men even more than Little Women. The boys of Plumfield School feel like a family even though they aren’t related by blood. I particularly identify with the musician Nathaniel, who is delicate and sensitive and lies a lot.
I’m a girl and I can’t read music, but I understand why he lies. I lie to stay out of trouble, too.
Some books act as mirrors—reflecting the reader’s experience—and some as windows—inviting readers to empathize with characters who may not look like them or think like them or share their beliefs or tastes.
Realistic novels of domestic life are the most obvious mirrors, but fantasies and historical fiction can be mirrors, too, and allow readers to see characters like themselves in the center of the action, solving problems, struggling against adversity, making decisions, and earning their happy ending—or tragically failing, but still being important, and above all, familiar. Window books are seldom comfortable or soothing, but they help us understand that, while we are not all the same, we are all human, with stories worth hearing.
Mirror or window is not an absolute state. A book like Virginia Hamilton’s Justice and Her Brothers is a mirror for some readers, a window for others. It is true, however, that most novels tend to reflect the dominant culture. In countries whose population is racially diverse and culturally heterogeneous this creates a terrible imbalance.
In the United States, there are plenty of mirror books written for male, educated, heterosexual, able middle class White Anglophone Christians. Women, LGBT people, people of color or different religions or languages or cultures or abilities are frequently pushed into the margins, cast in supporting roles, treated as exotic, dangerous, or inferior, misrepresented, or just left out completely. The books that mirror their lives and experiences are often assumed to be more formulaic, less interesting, less relevant, less important.
It’s the 21st Century now, and I’ve left my isolation behind in the 20th, along with my asthma. I write books as well as read them, and my stories mirror the things I’ve experienced and observed. My childhood in one of the most diverse and heterogeneous cities in the world is reflected in my two New York Between novels, Changeling and The Magic Mirror of the Mermaid Queen, set in a magical New York peopled by supernatural immigrants to the New World. The Freedom Maze, about a 1960’s white girl who goes back in time to her family’s plantation in 1860 and is taken for a light-skinned slave, is part of my lifelong struggle to understand and overcome the unthinking racism I grew up with.
Most of my stories contain characters of many colors, genders, ages, and sexual orientations because they are part of history—even Western European history. They show up in diaries, memoirs, census lists, cemeteries, and local records of all descriptions. Mirroring their experience opens a new window on our shared history, both good and bad.
The truth is, every reader needs both kinds of books. All children—all adults—need positive, undistorted images of their own reality. They also need positive, undistorted images of the reality of the other.
Diversity is a fact. Books that don’t acknowledge it are not mirrors, but shuttered windows. In the real world, skin color, gender, physical ability, sexual orientation, or even religion and class, in no way limit intelligence, competence, leadership ability, or common sense—although studies suggest that marginalized people tend to be more empathetic and generous, perhaps because they encounter so many window books.
No matter what we look like, no matter what we believe, we are all human. The best way to understand that—to develop empathy—is to read each other’s stories.
Delia Sherman was born in Japan and raised in New York City but spent vacations with relatives in Texas, Louisiana, and South Carolina. Her work has appeared most recently in the young adult anthologies The Beastly Bride: Tales of the Animal People; Steampunk! An Anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories; and Teeth: Vampire Tales. Her novels for younger readers include Changeling and The Magic Mirror of the Mermaid Queen. She lives in New York City.
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Children's Book Week 2015 #storylines: Cynthia Leitich Smith
A powerful lesson in love from Cynthia Leitich Smith’s Eternal (Candlewick Press, 2009): See other quotes in the series, and share your favorites! Quote #1: Frances Hodgson Burnett, A Little …
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Starting a Conversation with Young Readers
The tips are for sparking discussion with young readers of all ages, from toddlers to teens. Suggestions include incorporating the story into playtime; asking personalized questions; and making real-world connections …
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Asbury Park School District Invests in Literacy for All
Asbury Park, NJ – As part of Superintendent Dr. Lamont Repollet’s ongoing efforts to raise achievement for all students in the Asbury Park School District, the Board of Education has …
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Name your price for a great set of kids' comics, and support Children's Book Week!
Get your Humble Kids Comics Bundle here!
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Children's Book Week 2015 #storylines: Maurice Sendak
Let the wild rumpus start with this quote from Maurice Sendak’s classic Where the Wild Things Are (HarperCollins Children’s, 1963): See other quotes in the series, and share your favorites! …
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New Diary of a Wimpy Kid Series Book Title, Cover, and Color Revealed
NEW YORK, NY — Amulet Books, an imprint of ABRAMS, today revealed the cover, title, and color of the biggest book of 2015, Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Old School. …
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Eighth Annual Children's Choice Book Awards Winners Announced During the 96th Annual Children's Book Week
New York, NY — May 4, 2015 – The Children’s Book Council and Every Child a Reader announced the winners of the eighth annual Children’s Choice Book Awards (CCBA) at …
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Favorite Children's Authors Come Together To Get Kids Reading This Summer
NEW YORK, NY – Recent research from The Kids & Family Reading Report indicates that 91% of kids say that their favorite books are the ones they picked out themselves1 – and summer is …
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Children's Book Week 2015 #storylines: Janet Wong
Janet Wong let’s us know it’s book time with this rhyme from The Poetry Friday Anthology (Pomelo Books, 2012): See other quotes in the series, and share your favorites! Quote …
