Diversity in MG Lit






Illustration by: Aixa Perez-Prado
Welcome to WNDMG Wednesday – the holiday edition! Looking for holiday gifts for your MG readers?
How about a video game or virtual reality goggles?
Ha.
Not April Fools yet, sorry, I got confused.
But seriously folks, how about books … and not just books, but a subscription book box? I’ve got the perfect idea: the Atlas Book Club, founded by Bunmi Emenanjo. The Atlas Book Club was created specifically with diversity in mind: to provide a way for kids to read in a way that builds global awareness, cultural consciousness, empathy, and understanding.
Lucky for us at WNDMG, we got to talk to Bunmi a little bit about the Atlast Book Club, and we can’t wait to introduce her.
WNDMG: What made you decide to start Atlas?
BE: In 2016, my husband and I moved with our kids to our current home in a lovely neighborhood with very little diversity. To ensure the kids remain connected to their heritage, I started a children’s book club initially focused on African books. This book club included kids from different backgrounds made up of kids of friends and from our neighborhood. Also, whenever I was a Guest Lucky forReader at the kids’ elementary school, I selected books from our diverse collection. This usually led to interesting conversations with kids who normally would not have exposure to books set in countries such as Uganda or Burkina Faso. I saw how these books set all over the world resonated with my kids and other kids. My observation was that kids need to see themselves in the books that they read! When they do it helps build their confidence and have a sense of belonging. I also observed that kids are yearning to learn about cultures different from their own! What started off as a home book club where we read books set in different parts of Africa eventually grew into an exploration of countries all over the world. Since launching Atlas Book Club as a business in 2019, we have explored over 25 countries through our book selections!
WNDMG: In a time when there’s so much choice in subscription book boxes—and some of those choices do include a focus on diversity—how does Atlas set itself apart from the rest?
EB: Atlas Book Club is different because our focus is on global diversity. We believe that cultural competence is an important aspect of a child’s education and development. We also believe that we do our kids a disservice by not introducing them to global culture when they are young because they will enter, as adults, a workforce that will be more globally diverse than ever.
Our focus, with our boxes, is to bring global culture to a child through a fun, engaging, and interesting book. We are also very intentional about the books that make it into our boxes. Every decision we make is towards fulfilling our mission – (1) to help children of color see themselves in the books that they read; (2) to help all children travel the world and experience global culture through the books we select; and (3) to help shatter single story narratives and stereotypes by showcasing diversity within cultures. Every single item in our box is designed to fulfill that mission. For example, our Fun Facts card typically contains facts that are not well known and that celebrate different parts of the culture of the country we are exploring. We also include a local sourced souvenir from the featured country, which in turn supports a local family or community in that country. We are very particular about the book select and they have to fit certain criteria – we feature books with protagonists of color in genres that do not typically have kids of color as the main character such as magical realism or historical fiction; we ensure that we include books that show kids just being regular kids; and we do not shy away from complex societal issues. Lastly, we explore countries that most people are not even thinking about including Turkey, Iran, Haiti, Botswana, Korea, Peru, and Australia with a focus on Aboriginal history and culture, just to name a few.
WNDMG: You’ve committed to selecting a variety of books that showcase diversity “not just in race and culture, but also diversity within race and culture.” Can you talk a little bit about why that’s such an important distinction?
EB: This is one of the main parts of our mission and we take it very seriously. Often countries have a single story or a narrative that most people associate with that country which can end up fostering dangerous stereotypes. We believe that children are intelligent enough to understand that there are different aspects to every culture and country, we just have to teach them. When a child learns that diversity within cultures exist, they grow up with an awareness and sensitivity that will only serve them well as adults. Even more importantly, it helps them develop a level of respect for these cultures, and an understanding that to really know a person, you must seek to know who they are and where they are from and not simply assume certain things about them based on narratives that exist out in the world.
Furthermore, cultures and countries around the world have such rich, interesting histories and traditions that to boil them down to a single narrative is to lose out on so much richness and stories that could really broaden our understanding of people and of the world. A good example of this is the book You Bring the Distant Near which was featured in one of our YA boxes. This book exposed our readers to Indian Bengali culture. This nuance is important because we were able to dive into the diversity that exists within Indian culture and other South Asian countries. We learned, during our conversation with author Mitali Perkins, the difference between Indian Bengalis and Bangladesh Bengalis, and the history of the Bengal region. This is an example of what we mean by showcasing diversity within cultures through our book selections.
WNDMG: Do you have any partnerships with libraries or schools to support diversity and a global perspective in their collections?
EB: We offer a number of consulting packages to schools, libraries and parenting groups to help them build a book collection and curriculum that is diverse and inclusive in an intentional manner. It is extremely important to create an environment where ALL children can see themselves represented and feel like they truly belong.
WNDMG: Even though your books are curated for young readers, we know adults love to read middle-grade and young adult as well. What kind of responses have you had from parents of your readers?
EB: Ha! I love the parents that snatch up the books before their kids can get to it! The YA books and some of the middle grade ones have been a hit with the parents. You will find that YA books set in other parts of the world have stories that are deep, complex and quite satisfying. Atlas YA books are not all fluff! We have the occasional romance novels but these YA books are simply fantastic. My favorite book of 2020 was one of our YA selections called The Things She’s Seen which we featured when we explored the Aboriginal people of Australia, and it is incredible. And my favorite book this year so far is a middle-grade book called Other Words for Home that just hit me square in the gut. It is featured in our Syria Box.
WNDMG: Do you have a favorite story of an interaction you’ve had with your book subscribers?
EB: My favorite is a story a mom told me about her Nigerian-American son who attended a mostly white school. He read the book Ikenga by Nnedi Okorafor—a fantasy book with a Nigerian boy as the main character—and he loved the book so much he took it to his school librarian and advocated for the book to be added to his school library. He felt like the book represented so much of him and his culture that his classmates should get to read the book too. This really hit home because he validated what we have always believed – when kids see themselves represented in the books that they read, it helps with their sense of identity and belonging. They feel seen. This kid felt seen by reading the book Ikenga and felt his friends should see him, too.
WNDMG: What’s next for Atlas?
EB: Gosh! So much we would love to do! We would love to deepen our relationship with the homeschooling community. Our boxes have been such a hit with homeschooling families because they are perfect for social studies, geography and language arts with a focus on global culture. We also would like to grow our consulting clients because we feel that parents and schools do want to ensure that their libraries are diverse and inclusive, and they do want to provide these options to their students, but they do not know where to start! Our goal is to help schools, libraries and parents get there.
(Bio excerpted from Work With Me page on Atlas Website)
With over 17 years as an attorney, I have worked in spaces that span the spectrum from the think-tank Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, biotechnology companies, a number of federal agencies to the White House. The diversity of my work experience allows me to be able to communicate with individuals from different professional and personal backgrounds in a manner that resonates such that they feel seen and heard. As a student of vulnerability and authenticity, I bring all that I have learned to the table,
Stay in Touch with Atlas:
For more on subscriptions, homeschooling, and school visits, check out the Atlast website HERE.
Illustration by: Aixa Perez-Prado
We at WNDMG Wednesday are thrilled to host our guest post writer, author Waka T. Brown. Waka’s piece in honor of AAPI Heritage Month is a spot-on look at the importance of representation in middle-grade books, and we’re so grateful she took the time to stop by our blog.
Happy Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month, everyone! I’m honored to write a blog post this month for “From the Mixed-Up Files… of Middle-Grade Authors.”
With two middle grade novels which prominently feature Asian American main characters under my belt (and two more under contract), I’d like to take this opportunity to reflect and share what my journey as an Asian American author has been like thus far.
I’m curious how many Asian American children of the 70s and 80s are out there who remember “Charlie’s Angels.” Not the 2019 reboot with Kristen Stewart, Naomi Scott, and Ella Balinska. Not even the 2000 one with Drew Barrymore, Lucy Liu, and Cameron Diaz. I’m talking about the one with Farrah Fawcett, Jaclyn Smith, and Kate Jackson. Way back when, my friends and I sometimes played like we were the Angels—fighting crime and beating up the bad guys. I always played the character of Sabrina Duncan because… she had the darkest hair of the trio. Like me.
I grew up reading and loving books by Madeleine L’Engle, Lois Duncan, Beverly Cleary, L.M. Montgomery, Frances Hodgson Burnett, Louisa May Alcott, Laura Ingalls Wilder (just to name a few). I might not have looked like any of their main characters, but I identified with the spunky, smart, and resourceful girls featured in almost all their stories.
I never once thought about what it might mean to read a book with girls on the cover who looked like me. I didn’t even know that it was an option. It felt presumptuous to even want that. After all, until I left home for college, I only knew fewer than a dozen Asian Americans outside of my family. I assumed there weren’t many of us at all, and TV, films, books all seemed to support what I assumed was true.
So, what does it mean to grow up without meaningful, positive representation? When I was a teenager, beautiful equaled Christy Brinkley. When kids told me I was ugly, part of me wondered if they had a point. After all, I never saw models like me gracing the covers of Seventeen. When I never encountered stories about people like me, I internalized that maybe our stories don’t matter.
However, when I arrived in California for college for the first time when I was 18, it was with a bit (a lot) of culture shock that I realized I was not alone. I had never experienced a diverse environment like that one before. I joined the Asian American Student Association. I met Chinese, Taiwanese, Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese, Filipina, and South Asian friends. During study breaks we watched episodes of “Beverly Hills 90210,” and I wondered to myself where all the Asian people were. It took place in California, after all, and what I saw represented in media didn’t look anything like the diversity that now surrounded me.
Yet, when I started writing (screenplays mostly), my characters still didn’t look like me. “Imagine a bankable star,” I was advised when I created my characters. I wrote shallow, frothy romcoms that I thought would have mass appeal. When nothing came of them, I decided to throw previous advice out the window and wrote a teenage Roman Holiday-esque story… with two Asian leads. I would like to say this is when my big break came, but alas no. I was only able to get one person in the industry to even read it because, “Asian leads don’t sell.” Maybe at the time people truly believed that. But part of me thought (like my character Annie in Dream, Annie, Dream), How do you get to be a big name/bankable star if you’re never cast? After a disappointing reception to my attempt to create some Asian American representation, I went back to writing my standard fare for a while… but then again, I decided on a project, a far-fetched project. A memoir about 12 year-old me called While I Was Away.
Waka T. Brown at age 12
Even though a lot of people were dismissive of this endeavor and echoed my own concerns such as “Memoir? And middle grade? Good luck, that’s gonna be a tough sell,” and “you need to have an established platform to sell something like that,” I wrote it anyway. No one bought my more “commercial” writing, so why not? I wanted to get the memories down before they faded for myself. For every negative remark, there were also encouraging ones, like “You should definitely write that story” and “That is the story only you can write.” And those were the ones I hung on to.
Plus, there were other promising signs urging me not to give up. Crazy Rich Asians was a box office smash. Bookstore shelves looked a lot different from when I was a little girl. I caught up on years of reading, including works by Grace Lin and Kelly Yang. And despite a number of rejections that pointed toward my story’s lack of marketability and/or relatability with a wider audience, While I Was Away eventually sold at auction in a 2-book deal.
How people have embraced my first book since its publication in January 2021 has truly blown me away. It was an Oregon Book Award finalist, one of New York Public Library’s Best Books for Kids of 2021, a Bank Street Children’s Best Book of the Year for 2022…
But, I definitely feel my work as a writer isn’t finished. With my second book, Dream, Annie, Dream, I tackle the issue of representation head-on. Even though it’s a work of fiction, many of the experiences were drawn from my own. Although some of the topics and incidents in it might feel uncomfortable, it is my hope that young readers are drawn to my main character Annie Inoue like I was drawn to Sara Crew, Laura Ingalls, Anne Shirley, and Jo March.
While I truly feel my books are for everyone (even teenaged sons who have yet to read their mother’s second book… cough, cough… you know how you are), I appreciate that what each reader gains from them is their own. Some readers have let me know how they related to certain incidents. Some have mentioned that they just enjoyed the story. But the ones that I hold the most dear have been the ones who tell me that they’ve needed this story for decades.
For me personally, representation has come a long way from “the dark-haired Charlie’s Angel” to these two books.
It’s my sincere hope that more stories, diverse stories, stories about events we’ve never heard of continue to surface. And that as readers, we continue to embrace them all with open hearts and minds.
Waka is a Stanford graduate with a B.A. in International Relations and a Master’s in Secondary Education. While I Was Away (Quill Tree/HarperCollins 2021) is her debut novel.
Dream, Annie, Dream (Quill Tree/HarperCollins 2022) is her first work of historical fiction.
In addition to writing middle-grade stories, I enjoy writing screenplays. I wrote and co-directed the short film Double Tap (Official Selection, 2018 DC Shorts and Portland Film Festivals) and my feature-length screenplays (comedies, romcoms, & animated features) have been 2nd-rounders at AFF, placed in the semifinals of PAGE, and quarterfinals of Screencraft writing competitions.
I’m currently an online instructor with the Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education (SPICE). I teach about U.S.-Japan relations to high school students in Japan, and have also authored curriculum on several international topics. Recently, I was honored to receive the U.S.-Japan Foundation and EngageAsia’s national 2019 Elgin Heinz Outstanding Teacher award.
I live in the Portland, Oregon area with my husband, three sons, and my naughty yet lovable shiba Niko. I have a lot of hobbies such as running, art, baking, and playing guitar.