Reading Stats - Blog Posts

We need more diverse books in literature. More voices need to be represented.

The Cooperative Children’s Book Center has released the results of their 2019 survey on diversity in kidlit/YA.

We thank them for this invaluable work, note their commitment to adding Arabs/Arab Americans in future surveys, and present these graphs of their findings.

The 3,716 books surveyed have this many main characters total for the following groups:

Black/African: 11.9%

First/Native Nations: 1%

Asian/Asian American: 8.7%

Latinx: 5.3%

Pacific Islander: 0.05%

White: 41.8%

Animal/Other: 29.2%

LGBTQIAP+: 3.1%

Disability: 3.4%

“Taken together, books about white children, talking bears, trucks, monsters, potatoes, etc. represent nearly three quarters (71%) of children’s and young adult books published in 2019.” - librarian Madeline Tyner

When we looked at the breakdown for IPOC creatives who wrote and/or illustrated stories with characters of their own race, we found the following:

First/Native Nations: 68.2%

Pacific Islander: 80%

Latinx: 95.7%

Asian/Asian American: 100%*

*NOTE: these percentages include both authors and illustrators and, as pointed out by author Linda Sue Park for past surveys, Asians/Asian Americans are frequently illustrators but not necessarily authors of their own stories, meaning this is not fully reflective of #OwnVoices representation.

Black/African creatives wrote and/or illustrated only 46.4% of stories featuring Black/African characters.

This is the work that still needs to be done.