Support for African American Authors of Children’s Books

I reviewed a study done about African American authors by the Cooperative Children’s Book Center School of Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
They started collecting data in 1985 to document how many children’s books were actually written and illustrated by African Americans. Out of 5000 children’s books written and illustrated in 2006, 87 were African American authors. Most of these books were published by major trade book publishers (self-published authors and small press publications may not be included in this study).

In 2004, it was slightly higher with a total number of 99 published African American authors and illustrators for children’s books being noted.   With such a small percentage being reported, it further drove home the strong passion within me to complete my children’s mystery books series with a cute, brown little main character named Sunny. 

I had already dreamed about and envisioned Sunny’s character well before I read the above statistics.  However, after finding out about the low publishing rate for African American authors for children’s books, I wanted even more to contribute to the reading literature about an African American main character.

While it is important and an absolute must for kids to be exposed to all sorts of literature, reading about African American characters children can relate to is more relevant than we can ever know.  It helps to increase their self worth as they learn and understand from a very early age that what they do matters, that they are unique, valued as people, and worth writing about in stories.

I’ve personally seen how these books, which are representative of my own daughter’s beautiful brown skin, brown eyes, and kinky long thick ponytails, help her to appreciate her own wonderful features.  She looks at these sorts of illustrations of African American kids just a little longer, and not surprisingly, these sorts of books become some of her treasured favorites. 

Whether you are interested in children’s mystery books, adventure books, picture books, or any other sort of topic, children should have access to all sorts of multicultural literature and not be limited in their options of reading material.  Their lives should be represented, their experiences need to be captured, their stories need to be told, and their beauty needs to be well defined in a positive light.

You Can Help To Spread the Word about African American Authors

You can help to be an instrumental force in spreading the word about books written by African American authors for children’s stories.  See below as to how you can help contribute to this much needed literature in all children’s lives:

  • Please email to me at least one name of an African American author of children’s books that you are aware of that makes for great reading. I will include this information in my monthly newsletters for all parents and young readers.
  • Buy more African American children’s books for your children. Seek these sorts of books out and build up your children’s personal in home libraries with books about characters like these.
  • Word of mouth is great and works wonders. Tell your friends and family, or book club about an African American children’s book that your child really likes and encourage them to buy it as well.
  • Word of mouth is great and works wonders. Tell your friends and family, or book club about an African American children’s book that your child really likes and encourage them to buy it as well.
  • Log onto web-sites like aacbwi.com and thebrownbookshelf.com to find highlighted African American children’s book authors and get the scoop on all new releases
  • Once a year, awards are given by the Coretta Scott King Committee of the American Library Association’s Ethnic Multicultural Information Exchange Round Table (EMIERT). They honor some of the best African American authors and illustrators so watch out for this information.
  • Your child can log onto the Sunny’s Adventures web-site to receive free coloring book pages, a yummy lemon cake recipe, fan club ideas, a fun quiz, free bookmarks, and a chance to win some great prizes in the Kids Coloring Contest.

You’ll always see abundant advertisements for the more mainstream books but unfortunately most African American children’s books do not receive this same kind of exposure. Spread the word – it can make all the difference in the world.

Your child can log onto the Sunny’s Adventures web-site to receive free coloring book pages, a yummy lemon cake recipe, fan club ideas, a fun quiz, free bookmarks, and a chance to win some great prizes in the Kids Coloring Contest.

Parents can find out the 10 sure fire things you can start doing today to help your kids become natural book lovers and happy readers, by signing up for my free newsletter.

One thing that you can do to help support African American authors is to get your own copy of Sunny’s Adventures.