Growing up I never looked for myself in books, most books I read had white girls on the front cover and described white characters. For example, I loved the collection of Sweet Valley books by Francine Pascale. I don’t recall black character descriptions. I read about girls that looked like me in slave narratives. Rugrats one of my favorite cartoons only had one black family in the neighborhood, the Carmichael’s (Hey Susie!). Nonexistent were black girls like me. Books I was exposed to at least. Children like Marley Dias inspire me. As a child, I wish I had the senses to reject the status quo and challenge the school system, my teachers and demand more representation in the book I read. At only 11-years-old Marley Dias didn’t accept the dish served. Visible to her were the egregious bias in the books read in school, "When we actually got into the classroom, the books were just mainly about white boys and dogs," Dias said. Dias only wanted to see herself in words on the page, self-identifying characters After a conversation with her mother she decided to do something about it. The result, a book drive.
Dias ambitiously wanted to collect 1,000 books about black girls. Just how do you do that? Ah, the power of social media, "And we started posting pictures on Instagram of me holding black girl books and pretending to read them. And then, flash - we added a hashtag, and now it's become a full-on book drive," said Dias(#1000blackgirlbooks).
Black children also enjoy ardors of reading. They too dream of becoming astronauts, pilots, scientists, teachers and class president! The dearth diversity in books proves an incipient racial divide in schools. I believe relation to characters in stories can aid in children’s early literacy development.