Get These White Boys Out My Children’s Books

At the Huffington Post, Soraya Chemaly asks:

How many people would never consider buying Anne of Green Gables or Island of the Blue Dolphins for their 10-year old boy, but don’t pause before giving a daughter Treasure Island or Enders Game? Books featuring girls are, for the most part, understood to be books for girls. Which is interesting as well because, in addition to there not being enough, books featuring girls as protagonists are disproportionately among the most frequently banned children’s books. In a recent Buzzfeed list of 15 commonly banned books for kids, almost half were about girls. Girls who do things apparently scare a lot of people.

Over the last 100 years, this is how the numbers shake out:

• 57% of children’s books published each year have male protagonists, versus 31% female.
• In popular children’s books featuring animated animals, 100% of them have male characters, but only 33% have female characters.
• The average number of books featuring male characters in the title of the book is 36.5% versus 17.5% for female characters.

Also, the diversity problem is significantly worse when it comes to ethnicity:

Of an estimated 5,000 books released in 2012, only 3.3% featured African-Americans; 2.1% featured Asian-Americans or Pacific Islanders; 1.5% featured Latinos; and only 0.6% featured Native Americans. God forbid you have the audacity to be a girl of color and expect to see yourself as cherished by our culture.

Shout out to all the “girls of color” out there who, like me, just walked around being like “CHERISH ME, NERDS.” [HuffPo]