Trying to get better perspective
Jul. 23rd, 2006 10:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vcmwSo, do you know how hard it is to find funny easy-reader series for young reluctant readers with multi-ethnic protagonists?
I've been making a beginning chapter book list, and about a week ago I started looking for titles. And I thought "gee, it would be nice if not every book on this list was, umm, y'know, about little suburban white kids" so I looked over the WHOLE room at the library.
What I wanted was a) series of at least 2 or 3 books, that were b) funny, c) fast-paced, and d) had lots of pictures and e) big print.
So far I haven't found even one series with a non-white main character that meets all of those criteria.
What I'm thinking of is something like
Junie B. Jones, or Nate the Great, or The Magic Tree House books, but with main characters who aren't white.
And I can't think of any or find any. It's frustrating me. I've looked on the shelves, I've googled. I can find lists of books with African-American or Asian-American themes for, say, middle schoolers, but they never seem to be silly happy books.
There's a big marketing opportunity here for the first authors to write some fast funny cool stuff with neat pictures starring kids of different ethnicities.
I do note that The Captain Underpants books have one white and one black protagonist (cool), and that there are some books by Walter Dean Myers and Laurence Yep, and some really earnest looking super-easy (too easy for this list) readers by Bill Cosby.
I'm getting frustrated, that's all.
I've been making a beginning chapter book list, and about a week ago I started looking for titles. And I thought "gee, it would be nice if not every book on this list was, umm, y'know, about little suburban white kids" so I looked over the WHOLE room at the library.
What I wanted was a) series of at least 2 or 3 books, that were b) funny, c) fast-paced, and d) had lots of pictures and e) big print.
So far I haven't found even one series with a non-white main character that meets all of those criteria.
What I'm thinking of is something like
Junie B. Jones, or Nate the Great, or The Magic Tree House books, but with main characters who aren't white.
And I can't think of any or find any. It's frustrating me. I've looked on the shelves, I've googled. I can find lists of books with African-American or Asian-American themes for, say, middle schoolers, but they never seem to be silly happy books.
There's a big marketing opportunity here for the first authors to write some fast funny cool stuff with neat pictures starring kids of different ethnicities.
I do note that The Captain Underpants books have one white and one black protagonist (cool), and that there are some books by Walter Dean Myers and Laurence Yep, and some really earnest looking super-easy (too easy for this list) readers by Bill Cosby.
I'm getting frustrated, that's all.
