But changes are already underway. The most visible trend in children’s literature in the last decade takes many forms, but it can be loosely labeled multiculturalism for kids. Whatever it’s called, the phenomenon is plain: we aren’t in Kansas anymore. Publishers have awakened to the complaints of parents, educators and booksellers. Mother Goose is suddenly sharing shelf space with everything from English/Hebrew alphabet books to Zairean folk tales to anthologies of spirituals. In poetry collections, William Blake’s “Tyger” sits beside the tiger poem of the Jakun people of Malaysia. There are books for the children of gay parents, books for the disabled. Even Rabbit Ears Productions, which markets fairy tales on video narrated by the likes of Glenn Close and Jack Nicholson, is introducing a line of international folk stories called “We All Have Tales.”
Unlike the debate over college curricula, the revolution in children’s books has been surprisingly peaceful. Stephen Roxburgh, publisher of Farrar Straus Giroux’s Books for Young Readers, attributes this to the hand-in-glove relationship that exists between children’s publishing and educators. “So much of what goes on in kids’ books is a response to the perceived needs of the institutions-the libraries and the schools,” he says. As these institutions have been forced to deal with “a culture that’s increasingly diverse,” publishing has reacted accordingly.
So far multicultural titles account for only about 10 percent of what’s published for children. But the demand for those books is huge. Chronicle Books, a San Francisco publisher, reports that “Ten Little Rabbits” ($12.95), a charming counting book for preschoolers with an American Indian theme, has sold 32,000 copies since its publication in March. And Dial says that orders for “Brother Eagle, Sister Sky” ($14.95), with art by Susan Jeffers and the words of the 19th-century Chief Seattle, have prompted a printing of an extraordinary 280,000 copies.
The industry had a fling with books about minorities in the late ’60s and the ’70s. As Phyllis Fogelman, Dial’s publisher, points out, “The emphasis was mainly restricted to titles by and about African-Americans and Native Americans.” This time, the net is being cast much wider to include everything from the Hmong of Laos to the Miskitos of Nicaragua.
Long gone are the books that condescendingly introduced children to the quaint customs of our little friends from foreign lands. Instead, there is “The Last Princess” (Four Winds Press. $15.95), by Fay Stanley and Diane Stanley, a biography of Princess Ka’iulani, who tried in vain to prevent American businessmen from taking over Hawaii in the late 19th century. In Tololwa Mollel’s “The Orphan Boy” (Clarion. $14.95), a creation myth from the author’s native Tanzania, Paradise is once again lost through human cupidity. The tale is made all the more vivid by Paul Morin’s ironically lush illustrations. These excellent books are typical of the standards being set in the field. Using the trademarks of children’s publishing, including cheerful formats and sumptuous artwork, artists and writers are introducing children to some of the world’s harsher realities.
One of the people most responsible for the high standards of these books is Harriet Rohmer, founder of Children’s Book Press in San Francisco. All of her books are multicultural, and every story is told (often bilingually) by an author who shares the story’s culture. Blia Xiong is from Laos, and her story, “Nine-in-One Grr! Grr!” ($12.95), is about the Hmong tribe. Artist Carmen Lomas Garza’s “Family Pictures” ($13.95) depicts her own Mexican-American childhood in south Texas. For “The Invisible Hunters” ($12.95), a Miskito Indian folk tale about the first contact of an isolated tribe with the outside world, Rohmer herself tracked down fragments of the story all over Nicaragua; she got a piece of it in one village, another piece down the road, until she could put it all together.
Rohmer’s insistence on authentic ethnic storytellers was unique when she began publishing. Now it is be coming commonplace. And her decision to supplement the folk tales with true-to-life accounts of ethnic communities is already being echoed in such books as Faith Ringgold’s “Tar Beach” (Crown. $14.95) and Donald Crews’s “Bigmama’s” (Greenwillow. $13.95). Both are stories about African-American childhoods where ethnic particularities balance nicely against the universality of human experience. “Tar Beach,” especially, is ample proof that gritty stories can be appropriate for children.
In less than two years multiculturalism has become a well-established part of children’s literature. But do kids truly crave these books, or is this just another instance of right-thinking adults cramming moral codes down little throats? Rohmer, who aims her books primarily at children in ethnic and immigrant groups who have no literature of their own, says, “Kids say they were really happy to see someone who looks like them.” And Fogelman says the books are not just popular among minorities responding to stories about themselves: “Julius Lester told me that the letters he got from ‘To Be a Slave’ in the ’60s and ’70s were from black kids. Now the letters are almost all from white kids in the Midwest, who say, ‘There are no black kids in our area and this is my only experience in knowing about slavery’.”
