Study: Newbery-Winning Books Lack Diversity
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By Rocco Staino -- School Library Journal, 1/5/2009 2:05:00 PM
When it comes to books that win the Newbery Award, you won’t see many protagonists—or even secondary characters—who are people of color, says a study.
"Do You See What I See?: Portrayals of Diversity in Newbery Medal-Winning Children's Literature" by Anthony Nisse of Brigham Young University analyzed all Newbery-winning titles between 1922 and 2007 for gender, age, race, family structure, and economic status of their main and supporting characters.
When was the last time the most prestigious award in American children’s literature was given to a book with diverse characters? The last Newbery award winner with a black character was in 2000, when Christopher Paul Curtis won the medal for Bud, Not Buddy. And the last Hispanic protagonist was in 1965 in Maia Wojciechowska’s Shadow of a Bull.
First reported by Bloomberg News, the study was presented at the annual meeting of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, and comes on the heels of SLJ’s October cover story “Has the Newbery Lost Its Way?”
Nisse says he didn't expect the study to garner so much attention. Some have also responded with frustration that it would dishonor the Newbery. "This type of response has been minimal, and I have responded in each case with a reassurance that I love the Newbery books and want nothing more than to stimulate discussion on the topic and get more and more young (and older) readers to read these books and enjoy the experience of fine literature."
The Newbery award is given annually by the Association for Library Services to Children (ALSC) and, according to the study, promotes the sale of more books than any other literature award, including the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize.
ALSC President Pat Scales defends the award, saying, “the Newbery is given for literary quality” and that the selection committee does not take ethnicity, gender, and other considerations into account.
According to the Cooperative Children’s Book Center at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, children’s books with minorities as the main character represent only 10 percent of the total of all children’s books published annually, a figure that has remained constant since 1992.
Anita Silvey, author of the SLJ article “Has the Newbery Lost Its Way” and editor of several books, including Children's Books and Their Creators, an overview of 20th-century children's books, disagreed with the study’s findings.
“I think this study is not fair. In the past nine years, an African-American author, Korean-American author, and Japanese-American author have all won the award,” she says. “Since 90 to 95 percent of all children's books published are by white writers, the Newbery committee has done a much better job in terms of diversity than the children's publishing industry in general.”
Newbery Committee Chair Rose Trevino of Houston, TX, wasn’t available for comment. The Newbery committee will announce this year’s winner on January 26 during the American Library Association’s midwinter meeting in Denver, CO.
