Last June, in the wake of George Floyd's murder and the subsequent protests, I did an audit of Let's Talk Picture Books for representation of BIPOC creators and illustrators across the site. When all is said and done, this blog focuses on books intended for children, so diversity and inclusion are key -- today's kids are tomorrow's leaders and policy makers, and everyone deserves to see themselves represented in the books they consume and ultimately internalize. I promised to do the audit again this year, and I thought I would share the results:
BIPOC representation as a whole increased across the site, which was very encouraging, but at the same time it was very interesting to see that it wasn't quite as much as I thought: BIPOC representation across both interviews and reviews went up 15%, and reviews of books by BIPOC creators increased 22% which was great. However, representation via interviews actually went down .4%...which was probably the most surprising piece for me (though I talk to a lot of European creators who identify as White).
Like I said, I have a lot more work to do, and as I keep working on it, I will continue to look to the following children's book influencers for conversations around diversity and inclusion, especially by Black and Brown creators:
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