The Importance Of Diversity In Children's Literature

Books are the first introduction to many topics for children. In fact, for a child, it is an essential time to start reading, since it is an age where the children’s minds start developing preferences (Moser). Picture books are among the first literature, a child comes into contact with. Yet without a doubt, the majority of those characters are white or anthropomorphic animals with stories full of Eurocentric beliefs. Most children’s books neglect a variety of topics such as religion, race, homosexual, transgender, cultures, disability, and social status. Despite diversity becoming more prominent in television, movies, games, and teen novels, children’s literature still remain very Eurocentric.

Diversity is made up of people from different

Which, without a doubt is regarded as an abomination of mankind by many parents who wish their child’s minds not be rotted by the “perversions” of homosexuals (Stern). The homophobia and transphobia comes from parents, then which goes to their children, and so forth in an endless cycle of fear. Parents don’t realize that the phobias are meaningless and to impose their homophobic and transphobic view onto a child is detrimental to their perspective (Dahir). Children will grow up being homophobic and transphobic, having a hard time grasping the

Anthropomorphic animals are animals given human characteristics, i.e. animal walking, talking, and wearing clothes. We’ve grown up on watching and reading about anthropomorphic characters in fact, some examples would be animal characters from Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Peter Rabbit, and Arthur. Lately the anthropomorphic genre is receiving more attention to this date. Today, movies, shows, and children’s literature are full of them.

What do these characters actually represent? They don’t exactly portray a certain race, nor hold religious values, no hold political values either. Then just what? The answer is nothing. (Goldman) They hold no values, no ideals, nor any particular view on any given subject. The characters only exist purely for children’s entertainment. Anthropomorphism is in other words is for visual appeal. Animals are easy sellers for publishing companies, as they appeal to a child’s interest in animals.

Surprisingly, a study has found that anthropomorphic stories make it harder for a child to grasp the moral of a story, given that anthropomorphic characters are not human, but rather just animals in clothes. (Goldman) Children don’t learn as well from anthropomorphic stories as compared to human stories. Children learn better from a book with children over any