How we use books to talk about hard topics with kids

Stop searching for a “quick list of the best books” or “a reference list of problematic books to avoid.“

When readers ask me for these ‘best’ book lists, they’re assuming there is one right set of stories for all kids – usually assuming we all share one default identity (usually white, enabled, etc.) 

How we talk about oppression – and which books we use to open these discussions with our kids – depends on who we are.

Without knowing what you already know, who you see as ‘us,’ and what you see as ‘the problem’ – how on earth am I supposed to hand you a book list and be like “Here. Read THESE ONES.”

If it were that simple, racism would be done by now! Come on, you know it’s more complicated than that.

A book can be destigmatizing for disability, validating for multiracial folks, and yet still problematic and chock full of xenophobia.

Some of my favorite books using unicorns and narwhals to celebrate, say, neurodiversity are problematic if you choose to racially code animals through the lens of transracial adoption.

So with this understanding, below are the lenses we created in 2014 to evaluate stories in Books For Littles.

Turns out that Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop created a similar framework of ‘Mirrors, Windows, and Sliding Glass Doors’ in 1990. We developed the Books For Littles framework before finding that one – but they have a few elements in common. The Books For Littles framework includes two additional categories for discussions on Problematic and Unauthorized stories in critical literacy.

Normalizing stories

These should be the majority of your home bookshelf (and still at least half of a school library). Beginning at an early age, consistently choose resources that go beyond depicting targeted people & typically stereotyped identities as ‘the other.’ Provide texts with culturally responsible depictions of characters without tokenizing them.

Examples:

• Books normalizing girls of color with themes that surpass race or gender.
• Books normalizing characters with disabilities whose story doesn’t revolve around ability.

Validating Stories

Provide ample resources that reflect targeted and under-represented identities and challenges, particularly for kids who are often ‘the only one’ within a community.

Examples:

• Validating stories for adopted kids
• ‘A Place Inside of Me’ for Black kids affirming their humanity as risk targets of police violence

Destigmatizing Stories

Find resources that actively unpack stereotypes and history, while uncovering and dismantling bias. These are most widely used by educators. Use these sparsely, and balance them with normalizing stories to prevent kids from internalizing the idea that targeted people are inherently different or victims by nature instead of systemic design.

Examples:

• Adipositive kids books celebrating fat liberation
• 5 Things every kid should know about disability

Problematic Stories

Resources chosen with intent to show how we accept oppression & supremacy within our culture as normal and acceptance.

Examples:

• Problematic Trope: Saviors
• Problematic Trope: Tokenism

Unauthorized Stories

I adjusted my lens to include these types of stories after reading ‘Beaver Steals Fire‘ (afflink! Buy it, the authors refuse to whitewash and it’ll grow on you) – in which the preface explains not just how, but when Indigenous trickster stories like this are to be told.

Within some non-white cultures, stories from an oral tradition are only permitted to be told by trained & authorized storytellers. And within that – there are some faiths and cosmologies who understand stories to be akin(?) to living things. To steal and main this kind of story is a horrendous violation.

This is particularly true of many Indigenous stories told throughout what is now called North America. When we appropriate stories as an outsider, we twist it to make it more palatable for outsiders, leaving parts out, adding in nonsense, and destroying the original message and intent. Since this is most often done in the dynamic of oppressors stealing and twisting the stories of people whom we have harmed, colonized, and hurt – that is subtle form of cultural violence.

In choosing resources, be mindful of whether the person telling this story is both #OwnVoices and authorized within the community of origin.

Examples:

• Basically anything by Paul Goble and the ‘multicultural’ white author movement of the 90’s and 00’s.
• Also anything where a white person uses Asian characters but they don’t take off their damn shoes inside. GROSS. That’s why you’re (a little, but not guaranteed) better off reading #OwnVoices books by Asian & Pacific Islander authors
• Also this is a funny spin on opportunistic rubbish like ‘American Dirt‘
• Also see: The indigenous Curtain by Deb Reese of AICL – you can be #OwnVoices, but still not authorized!