book update

My son loves This Jazz Man! The cover says the book is appropriate for three- to seven-year-olds, but my son, who is barely two, loves it. I already had to read/sing it to him about ten times today and he cried when I refused to read it again. He has already learned a few words from the book: bass, encore, jazz man.... He loves the playfulness of the language (scat and bee bop sounds) and the instruments in the book. His uncle, who unfortunately lives 3,000 miles away, is a jazz drummer. My son got to play his uncle's drum set and piano when we last visited and still remembers the thrill. The book gives us a chance to review his drum knowledge too (drum sticks, bass drum, high hat, etc.)! So, this book was a great buy. And, as I mentioned before, the illustrations are wonderful. I highly recommend This Jazz Man!

bookstore adventure

Today I snuck out of work early and stole away to a bookstore to take a look at the multicultural books recommended to me by the readers and contributors to AntiRacistParent.com in response to my column on the lack of diversity in toddler literature.

I spent an (uninterrupted!) hour and a half at the store, which happens to be the largest new and used bookstore in the world. Yes, you guessed it - Powell's Books. I was able to locate only a handful of the recommended titles, and of those only about four actually featured characters of color. Unfortunately, I found some of the illustrations to be of poor esthetic quality. A matter of personal taste and bias, I know.

For example, Spike Lee's Please Baby Please is an excellent concept. I loved the language and the playfulness of the ideas, but the illustrations, I thought, were terrible. The babies on some of the pages seemed misshapen and malformed with stubby arms and strangely twisted bodies and facial expressions that were supposed to be happy, but seemed full of agony. That was too bad, because I loved the text of the book. I know my son would have loved it too.

I was impressed with the Snowy Day Book by Ezra Jack Keats, but summer is about to hit and snow is quite a ways away. Maybe a good Christmas gift?

What disappointed me the most, though, was how few children's books with central, even secondary characters of color were displayed and stocked by the bookstore. By the end of my bookstore experience I was so sick of looking at silly pink and purple animal characters and white people on nearly every page that I felt discouraged. Just like that time I went to the same store looking for birthday cards for two friends of color. All I found were white faces or kitchy and borderline racist Asian-style cards. Man oh man. And I never said anything to the store. I suppose there is still time.

During today's excursion I did decide to browse the international folktale picture book section too though my 21-months-old son is too young for folk tales. But those books were pretty much a horror story as well. Most of the folk tales were Asian, retold by Anglos (because they tell it best - know what I mean?) with illustrations so racist (like this one) that I was shocked. Scary! And why does one have to go to the international section to find books focusing on people of color anyway?

I did buy one picture book that was recommended to me on Anti-Racist Parent. It's called This Jazz Man and is written by Karen Ehrhardt, an African-American author Karen Ehrhardt. The book introduces famous African-American jazz musicians as it counts to nine. It's beautifully illustrated with collages by R.G. Roth. We'll see what my son thinks. It's definitely not a book about construction equipment, which is his latest obsession.

Well, I won't let myself get discouraged so easily by this bookstore experience. I will keep searching. If you have any recommendations on toddler books featuring characters of color, please let me know.

survey of diversity in my son's books

Inspired by Sue Lyons-Joell's survey of diversity in parenting magazines, published on antiracistparent.com, I decided to do my own little survey of my son's books.

I sorted his picture books, most of them geared towards toddlers, into piles:

- a pile of books featuring animals or objects (no people)
- a pile of books which include "visible minorities" (subjective definition, of course)
- a pile of books which incorporate white people or ambiguous/unknown people race-wise
- a pile of Dr. Seuss books only
- a pile of books in the Czech language (I am raising my son to be bilingual and bicultural).

Here are the results:

"Jay", who is nearly twenty-months old, has a total of 52 books.

Of those, 16 books focus on objects and animals, excluding humans all together.

9 are Dr. Seuss books, which incorporate humans that are either white or ambiguous-looking. One of Jay's Dr. Seuss book, My Many Colored Days, is quite problematic in that it equates colors, used to describe groups of people, with negative emotions and stereotypes. I blogged about this issue here. That book's got to go!

4 books are Czech picture books. Three of them include white people only (the Czech Republic does happen to be 97% white) and one has one page portraying a father and child of color (They are Roma). This page unfortunately reinforces stereotypes about the Roma people, because the two are shown dancing around the fire; a sort of primitive, tribal image very much removed from reality. This is something I hope to discuss and balance out with other portrayals when my son gets older.

10 books include "visible minorities", whether in drawings or photographs. However, none of my son's books has a person of color as a central character or depicts solely people of color.

Next, 12 books focus on whites or racially ambiguous people, whom I did not count as "visible minorities".

To sum up, only 19% of the total of my son's books and 28% of all his books featuring people, include "visible minorities", and 0% focus solely on people of color.

Time to go change that ASAP!

my many colored days

I'm disappointed. I took my son to a thrift store today and bought a few toys, including a pink stroller and a black doll, and books. He was getting a bit antsy, so I only skimmed the books before I bought them.

When we got home, I read one of them, My Many Colored Days by Dr. Seuss, with my son. The illustrations are beautiful paintings by Steve Johnson and Lou Fancher. And my son and I usually enjoy Dr. Seuss books, but this one... oy vey!

The "narrator" of the book is a yellow-orange gingerbreadman-like figure who talks about the different ways s/he feels on different days. The feelings are all based on colors. The pages dealing with colors that don't usually describe skin colors are fine: "Gray Day... Everything is gray. I watch. But nothing moves today." or "Then all of a sudden I'm a circus seal! On my Orange Days that's how I feel." Okay, fine. Those are generally happy or neutral, inoculous feelings and pictures.

But when we get to colors that are typically used to describe skin color or race, take a look at this:

"Some days, of course, feel sort of Brown. Then I feel slow and low, low down."

"Then come my Black Days. Mad. And loud. I howl. I growl at every cloud." This page, of course, has some sort of a wild boar or dog with big teeth and a mean expression, growling at the sky. Scary!

How about our "multiracial page" with gingerbread people of all different colors? "Then comes a Mixed-Up Day. And Wham! I don't know who or what I am!"

Of course, there is also the yellow page. I really hope that no one describes Asians as yellow anymore, but I have to quote here: "Then comes a Yellow Day. I am a busy, buzzy bee." Where the other pages had just one animal each, this one has a swarm of bees with indistinguishable features, all flying in the same direction.

Finally, after going through all the colors, including the confusing multi-color page, the narrator concludes: "But it all turns out all right, you see. And I go back to being . . . me." Phew! So relieved our gingerbreadman with green eyes doesn't have to feel black, brown, or all mixed up from too many colors confusing his days.

Well, I could go into a detailed explanation of what racial stereotypes each of those skin color pages reinforce, but I'll just leave it that. So much for a book linking certain colors with certain feelings or characteristics. Very disappointing, to say the least.