The format was very engaging, with six to eight page biographies of each illustrator, and most of the illustrators had done books which the kids were familiar with (Wanda Gag wrote Millions of Cats, Maurice Sendak we have nearly all the books of, Tove Jansson wrote the Moomin Troll books, and Hayao Miyazaki is by far our favorite animator.) The book was a bit eager to point out the illustrators who were gay or lesbian (which stood out more as it was otherwise fairly circumspect about people's family circumstances) but those mentions were brief and since our eleven year old (who'd already read the book herself) was upset by them I simply glossed over those bits when reading to the children as a group.
Something the kids did not notice, but that I did, was that the author of the book was clearly at pains to make sure that they checked their diversity boxes. having male and female illustrators was pretty easy. Hayao Miyazaki is primarily an animator, though he also illustrated manga, but he's a brilliant way to check the Asian box. But it seemed like it stuck out that the Hispanic and Black illustrators they picked had done books that we'd never heard of (Jerry Pinkney and Yuyi Morales). Perhaps I'm being unfair here. Maybe it's hard to find examples. As a child of the 80s and 90s, a Black man, LeVar Burton was the face of children's books to me, and it seemed like a number of Reading Rainbow books had Hispanic or Black characters, so I assumed that at least some of them must have had Black or Hispanic authors. Maybe it was hard to find more commonly known examples, or maybe my selection of known picture books is out of date, but it strikes me in particular because of what I found in the next book.
They liked the book enough that when they saw from the back cover that the same author had written another book called Before They Were Authors. They didn't have a copy at our local library, but we requested it from the system and they got it in within a couple days. This one was actually written first (2019, while the book on illustrators is from 2021) and it discusses ten authors.
The format is similarly attractive.
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| A page from the Madeleine L'Engle Bio |
The kids were also excited that it contained some authors they know and like: Dr. Seuss, J. K. Rowling, Beatrix Potter, Gene Luen Yang (who wrote the outstanding Boxers & Saints) and C. S. Lewis.
Each bio has a cover portrait with a quote and then a four page biography.
Here, however, the efforts at diversity created some odd fits. All of the authors covered are children's authors, except Maya Angelou and Sandra Cisneros, who are the only Black or Hispanic authors covered. Again, maybe it's harder than I'm thinking to find Black and Hispanic authors who wrote well known children's books. But it does almost seem like they came up with eight children's authors and then just googled "famous Black author" and "famous Hispanic author" to fill the remaining slots.
It does also have occasional odd circumlocutions or omissions. For instance, it says of Maya Angelou, "At the age of seven, a terrible crisis occurred while she stayed with her mother in St. Louis. Maya quit speaking for five years." The "terrible crisis" was the Angelou was sexually abused. I can understand why the author did not want to describe that in a children's book, but in that case it seems odd to include it in this elliptical way. Another example was in the biography of J. K. Rowling, where it said, "These years were darkened by her mother's diagnosis with a serious disease." the which disease remains unnamed even as it describes the mother's death and it's devastating effect of Rowling. The disease was multiple sclerosis.
Perhaps the most impressive exactly of evasion, however, is that in the entire biograph of C. S. Lewis, the author manages to never mention Christianity.
The basic concept and layout of the books is good. The kids wanted to like them. I wish some of the other elements had been better.
3 comments:
We have several of Jerry Pinkney's books and I think he's a pretty well-known illustrator who has won the Caldecott and quite a few other awards. Mirandy and Brother Wind, The Talking Eggs, The Lion and the Mouse are some of our favorites. I'd definitely classify him as a well-known and illustrious illustrator.
If I was writing a book about children's book illustrators I'd also include Kadir Nelson, whose art is amazing, and Allen Say, a Japanese-American author/illustrator whose books are outstanding.
I know Maya Angelou did write several picture books for kids. But I'd agree that there are probably better known black authors of books for kids. I'd probably pick Nikki Grimes if I was going to choose a favorite black author of children's books. Or British-Nigerian author Atinuke. I could certainly come up with more than one token black author and illustrator.
I guess everyone's list of favorites is going to be different and there are so very many children's books out there that it might be hard to put together a book that will have everyone's favorites.
Saying "Checking the diversity box" makes it sound like you think these are token efforts, but you don't say who you think would have been a better choice. Ezra Jack Keats and Grace Lin are who immediately come to mind for me.
But yes, Reading Rainbow did give you a skewed idea of how common minority authors and characters were in the 80s and 90s. The first children's book with a black character was Snowy Day published in 1962. Most of the books that had minority characters in the 80s and 90s were written by white people. The Seven Chinese Brothers was written by Margaret Mahy. Patricia Polacco was prolific during that time and regularly included black characters. But because the publishing industry is overwhelmingly white, it's only been in the past decade that more non-white authors have been able to get published, still at a significantly lower rate than white authors. Much like Reading Rainbow, schools and public libraries highlight books from diverse authors which gives the impression that there are tons of them out there, but in actuality about 75% of what is published for kids is by and about white people.
https://apnews.com/article/race-and-ethnicity-wisconsin-madison-childrens-books-480e49bd32ef45e163d372201df163ee
I was thinking Kadir Nelson too, whom I discovered thru Melanie's recommendation (Thanks, Melanie!). Gorgeous pictures.
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