Animals Are Us: Anthropomorphism in Children’s Literature; Celebrating the Peter J. Solomon Collection

does not support the normalization of dominant cultures
of gender, family structure, disability, religion, sexuality, and
socioeconomic class. In 2018, the CCBC began specifically
tracking books with animals and inanimate objects as subjects
or protagonists in order to provide more statistics overall,
using these numbers to produce an impactful infographic that
succinctly summarizes the issue (fig. 1). The CCBC’s most
recent data (2020) demonstrates that children’s books continue
to favor the use of animals over depictions of diverse people
to represent real-world situations for children to explore, as
“books about white children, talking bears, trucks, monsters,
potatoes, etc. represent nearly three quarters (71%) of children’s
and young adult books published in 2019.” 22 In that same
year, only 11.9 percent of the books the CCBC received from
publishers featured Black and African Americans as primary
subjects or protagonists; 8.7 percent featured Asians and/or
Asian Americans; 5.3 percent included major Latinx characters,
and only 1 percent featured First Nations/Native Americans.
Only 3.4 percent of these books reflect the (dis)ability
experience, while 3.1 percent include LGBTQIAP individuals,
and Pacific Islanders appear in .05 percent of books. (Beginning
in 2020, the CCBC will also track books written, illustrated by,
and featuring Arabs and Arab Americans.) 23
Since 2014, educators, librarians, and publishers have
been responding to a new call to action to diversify children’s
books. Several events served as the catalyst. In March 2014,
author Walter Dean Myers and author-illustrator Christopher
Myers published tandem father and son op-eds in The New
York Times on the continued dearth of books for children
featuring diverse characters and subjects. After almost half
a century of writing for young people, Walter Dean Myers
figure 1. David Huyck and Sarah Park Dahlen. Diversity in
Children’s Books 2018, June 19, 2019.*
*sarahpark.com blog. Created in consultation with Edith Campbell, Molly Beth
Griffin, K. T. Horning, Debbie Reese, Ebony Elizabeth Thomas, and Madeline
Tyner, with statistics compiled by the Cooperative Children’s Book Center,
School of Education, University of Wisconsin-Madison: https://ccbc.education.
wisc.edu/literature-resources/ccbc-diversity-statistics/. Retrieved from https://
readingspark.wordpress.com/2019/06/19/picture-this-diversity-in-childrensbooks-2018-infographic/.
affirmed that “[b]ooks transmit values. They explore our
common humanity.” Because of that, he asks:
What is the message when some children are not
represented in those books? Where are the future white
personnel managers going to get their ideas of people of
color? Where are the future white loan officers and future
white politicians going to get their knowledge of people
of color? Where are black children going to get a sense of
who they are and what they can be? 24
22