Books as Mirrors

On the Importance of Mirrors

"... the curriculum is a structure that ideally provides “windows out into the experiences of others, as well as mirrors of the student’s own reality.” In other words, schools should be spaces where kids explore the unfamiliar, but also see their own lived experiences validated and valued. For students whose racial, cultural, linguistic, or economic backgrounds differ significantly from that of the mainstream, the “mirrors” part of the metaphor can be particularly powerful..." Gregory Michie

Publishing Statistics on Children's Books about People of Color and First/Native Nations and by People of Color and First/Native Nations Authors and Illustrators

CCBC's Choices 2016 List
CCBC Choices is the annual best-of-the-year list of the Cooperative Children’s Book Center. This is a listing of titles that have been chosen for CCBC Choices 2016. The final CCBC Choices 2016 publication will include additional books (one or two might be removed) and include annotations and recommended ages for all of the books selected for final inclusion, as well as an author/title/subject index, and a commentary on the publishing year. The CCBC Choices 2016 booklet will be available at the CCBC after March 5, 2016. 

Cooperative Children's Book Center
CCBC's history statement:
In 1985 the Cooperative Children's Book Center began to document the numbers of books we received each year that were written and/or illustrated by African Americans. Then CCBC Director Ginny Moore Kruse was serving as a member of the Coretta Scott King Award Committee that year, and we were appalled to learn that, of the approximately 2,500 trade books that were published in 1985, only 18 were created by African Americans, and thus eligible for the Coretta Scott King Award.

As a statewide book examination center serving Wisconsin, the CCBC receives the majority of new U.S. trade books published for children and teens each year. In the early years of gathering these statistics, we used the CCBC's collections and worked in conjunction with the Coretta Scott King Award Task Force of the American Library Association, to document the number of books by and about African Americans published annually.
Starting in 1994 we began also keeping track of the numbers of books by Asian/Pacific and Asian/Pacific American, First/Native Nation and Latino book creators as well. We also began documenting not only the number of books created by people of color and First/Native Nations authors and illustrators, but the number of books about people of color and First/Native Nations, including the many titles that have been created by white authors and/or illustrators.