Thursday, July 14, 2011
Multicultural Childrens Books
I recently came across this article from Scholastic entitled “How to Choose the Best Multicultural Books”. The article talked about different books that are good for children to read about different cultures. It listed a bunch of books, and also gave tips for picking out a high-quality multicultural children’s book. I found this article a little ironic because we had just discussed Scholastic’s book clubs in class. In class, we looked through several flyers for books offered for various age groups. None of these flyers had very many multicultural books, if any at all. The characters in the vast majority of the books offered are white. I thought it was interesting that Scholastic tries to tell people what books provide good depictions of different cultures, yet they don’t offer very many multicultural books in their ads. This article makes it seem as though Scholastic really cares about getting children exposure to books that properly depict other cultures. If this is the case, however, why don’t they offer more multicultural books in their flyers, which would give children more access to the books that they claim are great ways to learn about different cultures? I believe that it is important for children to have access to many different books about different cultures. Since Scholastic reaches so many different children, providing ample multicultural book options in their flyers would be a great way for children to have access to books that they otherwise may not have access to.
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Scholastic seems very fishy to me. In my opinion i believe these book club fliers are targeted for working class families children. Most working class parent(s) desire to be more involved with their children literature and education but working long hours does not allow it. These scholastic book clubs provide books approved, accessible, and a great literature selection to the untrained eye. I never knew how majority based Scholastic was until that discussion in class, i even order from their book club as a child.Scholastic pretty much chooses books they find "appropriate" and get away with it. Most parents don't notice this either, they trust it since it is supported b the school. We all know that schools systems don't always have the child's best interests in mind. If there are any multicultural books they are usually created from someone not of that culture that is merely displaying their views. Scholastic is only going to promote books that fit in their majority views, especially when it comes to culture, religion, gender, disabilities, etc. Out of all the fliers i did not see one child with a disability being depicted. Scholastic is not a realistic choice when it comes to representing our society. Many children read these books thinking this is how society should be, and it is the children who suffer (especially when it comes to their identity).Hey its just my opinion.
ReplyDeleteScholastic is a huge company. You would think they would have a larger variety than they have, but I do not see a huge problem with it. There have got to be other publishing companies out there that publish multi-cultural children's books. Yeah, it is easier to get books through Scholastic because it is such a big company and a lot of schools have book fairs, but there are a few that are multi-cultured. Why not get those and then some elsewhere? I can see a problem with the amount of multi-cultured books if you guys are talking about say an Indian child reading about Indian families, but not necessarily an African American reading about other cultures. At such a young age I think kids want to read about their own race more so just because they can relate to it better. So in this sense, yeah it raises more of an issue than I once thought.
ReplyDeleteI think the problem with scholastic is that because it is already such an established/acknowledged company, they have the means to advertise and go about their business as they please without changing much. They have the resources to push their marketing in any direction they want without the corresponding changes in their selection, they also have the leverage of high accessibility and status as a household name. This allows them to promote themselves and push ideas much easier than smaller companies. The whole rich get richer while the poor get poorer.
ReplyDeleteI think there are several big problems with Scholastic but I also think that they do serve a purpose. When it comes to multi-culture Scholastic is surely not a go to choice, which is a problem in and of itself because they are the most represented in our schools nationwide, and globally. The best thing about Scholastic is that the books are often times inexpensive enough that even children in low-income families might be able to afford a book or two at the book fair. So, without Scholastic entering our schools there may be no literature offered to these children at a price which they could afford. Obviously, in a perfect world, the preference would be that they widen their horizons a little bit to include books which might interest all cultures and backgrounds. However, as Jafar tells Aladdin, "You've heard of the golden rule, haven't you? Whoever has the gold makes the rules?" So, the head honcho over at Scholastic holds the influence over the book selections and until that person (or those people) decide that a multicultural point of view is necessary it will remain outside the realm of possibility. The majority of the kids who are buying these books are likely the ones who influence the demographic at which these books are aimed, and another reason why it is not likely to change.
ReplyDeleteScholastic is a huge name and they almost have a monopoly in schools. I can't remember any other companies doing anything similar to scholastic when I was in school, I'm not sure about these days, but I'm assuming nothing has changed. I think parents just have easy access to ordering the books through scholastic, or maybe parents don't know where they can go to purchase multicultural books. I wonder how long it will take before someone starts a book franchise similar to scholastic but with more a more diverse foundation... and with that I wonder if it would be as successful as scholastic, more successful, replace it? Or is scholastic such a household name that no one will ever compete with them on that level?
ReplyDeleteGoing off the question Jessica previously posted, in my opinion because of how diverse schools are becoming I don't think it would be too hard for a new company to create a similar (to scholastic) franchise that included more diversity and multicultural books. There is so much immigration to the United States from different countries and classrooms are becoming much more globally diverse than they have been in the past. Not only would student's and their families be more interested in a new company that sold more multicultural books, I think teachers would be as well.
ReplyDeleteI'm in a program through the college of education called the Globals Educators Cohort and we have learned a lot about global education and how to teach in a more "global" way. I think one way to teach in global way would be to purchase more multicultural books and bring them into the class to read. Life gets busy, and teachers don't always have the time to go search high and low for multicultural books, so having a franchise similar to scholastic where the books come to you, again in my opinion, would be extremely successful!