The Importance Of Diversity In Children's Literature

1459 Words3 Pages

Books are the first introduction to many topics for children. In fact, for a child, it is an essential time to start reading, since it is an age where the children’s minds start developing preferences (Moser). Picture books are among the first literature, a child comes into contact with. Yet without a doubt, the majority of those characters are white or anthropomorphic animals with stories full of Eurocentric beliefs. Most children’s books neglect a variety of topics such as religion, race, homosexual, transgender, cultures, disability, and social status. Despite diversity becoming more prominent in television, movies, games, and teen novels, children’s literature still remain very Eurocentric.
Diversity is made up of people from different …show more content…

Which, without a doubt is regarded as an abomination of mankind by many parents who wish their child’s minds not be rotted by the “perversions” of homosexuals (Stern). The homophobia and transphobia comes from parents, then which goes to their children, and so forth in an endless cycle of fear. Parents don’t realize that the phobias are meaningless and to impose their homophobic and transphobic view onto a child is detrimental to their perspective (Dahir). Children will grow up being homophobic and transphobic, having a hard time grasping the …show more content…

Anthropomorphic animals are animals given human characteristics, i.e. animal walking, talking, and wearing clothes. We’ve grown up on watching and reading about anthropomorphic characters in fact, some examples would be animal characters from Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Peter Rabbit, and Arthur. Lately the anthropomorphic genre is receiving more attention to this date. Today, movies, shows, and children’s literature are full of them.
What do these characters actually represent? They don’t exactly portray a certain race, nor hold religious values, no hold political values either. Then just what? The answer is nothing. (Goldman) They hold no values, no ideals, nor any particular view on any given subject. The characters only exist purely for children’s entertainment. Anthropomorphism is in other words is for visual appeal. Animals are easy sellers for publishing companies, as they appeal to a child’s interest in animals.
Surprisingly, a study has found that anthropomorphic stories make it harder for a child to grasp the moral of a story, given that anthropomorphic characters are not human, but rather just animals in clothes. (Goldman) Children don’t learn as well from anthropomorphic stories as compared to human stories. Children learn better from a book with children over any

Show More
Related

  • Personification And Irony In Coyote Tales

    330 Words  | 1 Pages

    The use of personification by the author displays the animal’s likeness to humans and therefore further aids to establish the future bond between the two, somewhat foreshadowing the ending to the story, where the humans inherited their somewhat slanted eyes from the coyote. This personification also gives depth to the animal characters, such as coyote’s laziness, or mole’s hotheadedness toward coyote and he hardworking personality. Personification like the

    Read More

  • How Banning Books Marginalizes Children By Paul Ringel

    390 Words  | 1 Pages

    In the article How Banning Books Marginalizes Children, the author, Paul Ringel, states that approximately fifty-two percent of the books banned in the last ten years illustrate “diverse content”, such as race, religion, gender identity, etc. Ringel believes that attitudes about which books are “appropriate” for kids to read have too often suppressed stories about different cultures and life experiences. He basis his argument around the pretext that when libraries stop the banning it will allow kids to learn how to navigate imaginary worlds filled with differences and apply those lessons to their own lives.

    Read More

  • How Stories Came To Earth, Coyote Steals Fire, And Master Cat

    918 Words  | 2 Pages

    Anthropomorphism is giving non-human characters human qualities. In How Stories Came to Earth it’s shown various times, “After following the tracks of the leopard, spider dug a very deep pit. He covered it over with the branches of the trees and came home. Returning in the very early morning” , this quote is

    Read More

  • Use of Animals in Art Spiegelman's Maus: A Survivor's Tale

    1044 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Maus series of books tell a very powerful story about one man’s experience in the Holocaust. They do not tell the story in the conventional novel fashion. Instead, the books take on an approach that uses comic windows as a method of conveying the story. One of the most controversial aspects of this method was the use of animals to portray different races of people. The use of animals as human races shows the reader the ideas of the Holocaust a lot more forcefully than simply using humans as the characters.

    Read More

  • Savagery And Civilazation In William Golding's Lord Of Flies

    809 Words  | 2 Pages

    For example Ralph represents the politicians and his conch shell is representing the law in society he also stands for civilazation. Jack might be representing the military leader because he all the time speaks about hunting, protection and way too much aggressive for his age, he also responsibile for food. W. Golding also gives us a character called Piggy with specs which might be representetive for scientists, scholars because the way he speaks is quite different from any other character, he has critical tone, he’s specs helps the boys to start a fire and he is the one of few characters that you can pity on because he died for nonsense reason. The boys don’t listen Piggy’s ideas even though his ideas are

    Read More

  • A Picture is worth a Thousand Words: The use of Animal Allegory in Maus

    1227 Words  | 3 Pages

    ...ader understand what people go through during the Holocaust. By illustrating the different races of people using different animals, it helps the reader understand the power of identity during a traumatic event. By telling the Jewish population numerous times that they are worthless, they begin to believe this and in a sense give up in their fight for their life. The graphics go along with the narration of the story to help illustrate to the reader the difficulties faced by the Jewish citizens just because they are Jewish. When the reader sees a cat on the page with a mouse it causes the reader to tense up and really feel the difficulties faced during the Holocaust because of discrimination. The portrayal of the characters as animals in his novel is a sort of allegory to demonstrate the struggles faced during the Holocaust with regards to identity and discrimination.

    Read More

  • Animals In Art Spiegelman's Maus

    1116 Words  | 3 Pages

    One of the evident drawbacks of having animals depict human characters, is that they are figuratively and literally dehumanized. Humans are more complex than their primitive desires, impulses, and needs; and this fact could very easily be lost in translation with this choice of illustration. For example, it could be interpreted that the Germans who were drawn as cats, were behaving like the carnivorous species that they are, and chasing mice, because it is encoded in their natural instincts and a part of their primitive behaviour. This exempts the perpetrators, since it implies their lack of free will was affecting their every decision. It also implies that since the Germans are another specie, the mass murder of millions of people could never have happened by any other nationality, and that evil actions are based upon ethnicity, rather than a human’s negligence from their moral standings. However, Spiegelman was able to slightly deter from this indiscretion by giving each character dynamic personalities and pragmatic

    Read More

  • Role of Symbols and Symbolism in C. S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia

    1046 Words  | 3 Pages

    It has always been amazing to realize how well the literature I read as a child has stayed with me through the years. It takes an exceptional writer to compose a narrative that maintains a storyline on the same level of a child's understanding; it takes everything short of a miracle to keep a child's interest. However, that undertaking has been accomplished by many skilled authors, and continues to be an area of growth in the literary world. Only this year the New York Times has given the genre of children's literature the credit it deserves by creating a separate best-sellers list just for outstanding children's books. Yet, on another level, children's literature is not only for the young. I believe that the mark of a brilliant children's author is the age range of those who get pleasure from the stories; the wider the range, the better.

    Read More

  • Racism in Children's Literature

    2373 Words  | 5 Pages

    Writing has been an important part of every culture from the beginning of time. The illustrations of cavemen have evolved immensely. Today, there are millions of published books. In fact, there are over four hundred books published every month. What happens when these books turn into something more? Is there racism in our children's literature? Ironically, the renowned great works of our past is full of racism. The question that remains, how do we teach our children the great lesson that these brave authors intended?

    Read More

  • Disney Film Analysis

    1043 Words  | 3 Pages

    For decades Disney has been the source of happy endings, fairytales, and family friendly stories for children of all ages. These stories range from realistic and familiar, to the eye-catching magical fairytale. The key to each of these stories are the happy endings brought about by each of the characters unique personalities and dreams. Disney’s films are attempted to provide children with the basic understanding of wrong versus right, but instead influences our society’s beliefs and awareness. Although Disney’s efforts to provide the basic morals to our children are misleading and affect our society strongly, they also contain the use of racism in a form which shows the major differences between characters. The once admired and well-known characters are seemed to be recognized by their species, ethnicity and even their social class. Disney films have taken out of context and have persuaded their viewers understanding of racial stereotyping, which is thoroughly explained in Henry Giroux and Grace Pollock’s novel, The Mouse that Roared. They bring awareness to the underlying racial stereotyping in Disney films, which deeply affect our societies understanding today. Giroux and Pollock bring into perception these admired and regularly watched films through precise examples and racist rendering of the specific characters species and ethnicities which strongly influence our society and lead children to intake these negative influences.

    Read More

  • Children's Ability to Differentiate Between Real and Fantastical Entities

    1431 Words  | 3 Pages

    In the field of developmental psychology, children have become a popular interest. By studying such changes children go through in the early stages of childhood, researchers provide better knowledge and insight on how these changes influence the actions and behaviors of children. It has been identified by many that during these stages, children have rapid mental and cognitive development. Likewise, during this time children are thought to easily confuse reality and fantasy. This paper will consist of two reviews involving two different studies which assesses the children's ability to differentiate between fantasy and reality. One will determine how fantasy/reality distinction evolves with age, while the other investigates children's perception of storybook entities. Both focus on children's ability to categorize specified objects/people/events.

    Read More

  • Children's Literature Discussion

    2892 Words  | 6 Pages

    of millions of people did not happen I know that it did, and I know

    Read More

  • The Making of the Golden Age of Children's Literature

    921 Words  | 2 Pages

    For children’s literature the Golden Age was a time of reform and new beginnings. The Golden Age opened the doors for an interesting read where adults are not present. The literature that was intended for children during this period introduced a world of literature in which children were the protagonist. These stories not only take children on remarkable journeys though time but they also address many issues of social class in regards to children. The Golden Age reflects greatly the Victorian era where children were left to become orphans because their parents could not support them financially or because their parents just did not want them. The Golden age welcomed children into a society that they were once neglected by. It was not until religion rebuked the evil out of children that they became acceptable by society and as a result were allowed to be portrayed in books.

    Read More

  • A Timeline of Children's Literature

    1209 Words  | 3 Pages

    Literature has been part of society since pen met paper. It has recorded history, retold fables, and entertained adults for centuries. Literature intended for children, however, is a recent development. Though children’s literature is young, the texts can be separated into two categories by age. The exact splitting point is debatable, but as technology revolutionized in the mid-twentieth century is the dividing point between classic and contemporary. Today’s children’s literature is extraordinarily different from the classics that it evolved from, but yet as classic was transformed into modern, the literature kept many common features.

    Read More

  • LGBT Subculture

    1415 Words  | 3 Pages

    Baker, Jean M. How Homophobia Hurts Children: Nurturing Diversity at Home, at School, and in the Community. New York: Harrington Park, 2002. Print.

    Read More

More about The Importance Of Diversity In Children's Literature

Open Document