I tell you its so frustrating to find a children’s book for my 2nd grader to read – a classic like King Arthur or Oliver Twist, or more contemporary like Nancy Drew or Encyclopedia Brown – when I find that the cover always depicts a white child as the main character. Now, I DO know these books are written with white characters, they are American classic literature after all.
However, I also remember being told that books are better than TV because they allow your mind to imagine the story, the scenes, the characters. Your mind has to work harder when reading a book. I also remember being a young girl and reading Encyclopedia Brown and never feeling that I could be him, but I sure wanted to be his assistant in solving mysteries. I remember reading (and re-reading) my beloved Linda Craig series and wanting to be that teenager solving mysteries on her horse in central California living with her grandparents after her parents died in a car accident. I wished I had her long black hair; I wished I understood Spanish. I even wished my parents weren’t around.
Fast-forward to today talking to a friend about her youngster who started wearing glasses a year ago. He is drawn toward any animated character, stuffed toy or likewise that wears glasses. He leaned over to his mother during the movie, “See Mommy, he’s wearing glasses”. She smiles and nods lovingly at her son, protectively aware that he hates his own glasses and is thankful for any opportunity that shows him glasses are everywhere – lots of great people wear glasses!
Mixed race people are the fastest growing population segment in the United States according to the 2010 census. My swirled son has become a socially significant statistic, and will one day be economically and politically significant in the United States – once he’s old enough to work and vote. So why do publishing companies continue to block his budding imagination with unnecessary illustrations on the front covers of children’s books? How can my son imagine that he is the main character of his world, sailing over oceans, living in tree houses, solving mysteries and meeting exotic characters when he is stifled by publishing houses’ continued use of these illustrated book covers. Why not draw a picture of the ship and not the sailor? A rocket and not the astronaut? Is my son’s own self confidence suffering because he cannot not imagine he is the strong, all-important main character? That main character is always “somebody else”, somebody who doesn’t look like him. As classical animal stories survive – Mother Goose stories and Winnie the Pooh – modern advertisers recognize the workaround for reaching a wider audience, they use animated animals as a spokesperson – the Charmin bear and the Geico gecko. In this way they don’t alienate any audience from buying their product, including the growing number of mixed race families. Few marketers have the moxie that Cherrios showed by using a mixed race family in its 2012 commercial.
If you are Black you already know what I’m talking about; example, now there is a Black US President to showcase for your youngster as being a possibility for his/her own future. If you are White, imagine that all your history books are filled with only dark-skinned Presidents. Would you find it challenging to think of yourself as President one day? Or your whole life you’ve only had Black teachers in school, men or women, they were all Black. What are the chances you would see yourself as becoming a teacher one day? You may want to be, but you might have trouble picturing it. Or a girl who has only ever known male doctors, would she find it difficult imagining herself as a doctor one day? Imagine the joy for my friend’s son sitting in a dark movie theater in front of a full techni-color large screen showing a clever young star who looks just like him – glasses and everything. All children deserve the same access to imagine themselves as King Arthur, Robin Hood or Tom Sawyer.*
Book publishers MUST recognize that some illustrations restrict many young readers’ ability to dream, in fact a large and growing population of young readers. Book publishers should be widening the circle of readers, not defining it. Aside from the obvious male/female dynamic, I for one, do not buy or check out a children’s classic with a cover illustration that restricts my son’s ability to use his imagination and place himself at the center of the story. I recognize from my own youth the influence that literary imagination has on one’s development and outlook on the future. These stories have survived hundreds of years because they are great stories, they draw on common human experiences and ignite imaginations. There’s no better time like the present for publishing companies to start taking their message a step further and making children’s classics truly accessible to a wider, more ethnically diverse population. Universal cover illustrations will do this without “hurting the story”. As long as publishing houses illustrate book covers with white human characters, they will subtly (or is it overtly?) be closing off a growing number of young Americans to some great literature.
* Note: I realize I wrote this almost completely disregarding the difficulties girls have with imagining themselves as strong central characters in classic literature rarely written with that in mind.
Postscript: At about 12 years old, my son made the comment that all literature he reads for school have the assumption that all characters are white, except those ones who are pointed out as not white, sometimes discreetly "his woolen hair" or "her brown skin" or "Jimmie's mom is from Peru".
