Study: Black people almost never appear in children's books.

According to a study by the Cooperative Children's Book Center, out of a study of 3,200 children's books published in 2013, only 93 portrayed black people, while only 67 were written by a classification of "African/African American" individuals. This is the fewest number of portrayals of black people in children's books since 1994, when the study started its annual count,

Similarly, American Indians, Asians, and Latinos are all underrepresented as well.





The full breakdown for 2013:

Black/African Americans:
67 children's books written by African Americans
93 children's books about African Americans

Latinos:
48 children's books written by Latinos
57 children's books about Latinos

Asian Americans:
90 children's books written by Asian Americans
69 children's books about Asian Americans

American Indians:
18 children's books written by American Indians
34 children's books about American Indians.

This roughly computes to 3% of all children's books representing 13% of the American population which is African American, or roughly 2% of all children's books representing 15% of the American population which considers themselves Latino.

Added together, just shy of 8% of all children's books are about a race other than white.

In case you're wondering, when Latinos are taken out of the white demographic, whites make up only 63.7% of America.

That other 36.3%?

It sure isn't showing up in children's books.




No, that isn't the cover of a recent book. The Caldecott-winning 'The Snowy Day' was published in 1962 by Ezra Jack Keats, who famously said about his book, "None of the manuscripts I’d been illustrating featured any black kids—except for token blacks in the background. My book would have him there simply because he should have been there all along."

Something today's publishers and writers seem to forget.