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Guest Posts

Guest Post from Katia Senff-Director of Publishing, FarFaria

Recently, the lack of diverse books in children’s publishing has been making headlines. A dismal 10% of books published in 2012 contained multicultural content. Yet, 37% of the US population is made up of people of color.[1] A change in children’s publishing is long overdue and publishers like FarFaria are striving to challenge the status quo.FarFaria

 

At FarFaria, we take deliberate steps to ensure that our books are as diverse as the children who read them. Because of our own multicultural backgrounds, many of our books explore traditions from around the world, as well as the diversity within our own country. As a result, our books contain a great range of characters.

My earliest memories are of traveling. We’re in our two-toned white and chocolate brown Ford station wagon headed from Kansas to Florida. Family friends have joined us for the 4,000-mile trip—four adults and five kids aged three to six are packed into a car that seems as big as a boat. As a bonus we take a quick flight to Havana. My only memories of that side trip are of tall, dark haired women with skin the color of roasted peanuts striding past us in stiletto heels and pencil skirts. My mother and her friend wore neither. At the impressionable age of three I already knew people had different ways of living.

While in many ways this may seem to be just a random memory, it’s not. It’s a precursor to what will come decades later as my business partner, Lisa Travis, and I launch Pack-n-Go Girls. Our mission is this: We want to shrink the world. We want little girls to dream of going to far away places and not just to the mall. If they dream about it, they’re a lot more likely to pack their bags and go some day. And when they get out there, they’ll discover that even though we may have colorful differences across the globe, they’ll also discover that people are the same all over the world.

We are thrilled to start off our author interview series with Joseph Bruchac!

Joseph Bruchac

He is the author of more than 120 books for children and adults. The best selling Keepers of the Earth: Native American Stories and Environmental Activities for Children and others of his “Keepers” series, with its remarkable integration of science and folklore, continue to receive critical acclaim and to be used in classrooms throughout the country.

Please welcome Hannah Ehrlich, the Director of Marketing and Publicity at LEE & LOW BOOKS. LEE & LOW BOOKS has been on the forefront of this push for children’s books to reflect the diversity in the world around us. Today, Hannah reflects on the bias in non-fiction and puts forth options of heroes of color for children of all colors!