After our post on raising race-conscious children, we wanted to share some books for kids featuring characters of different races and ethnicities. Some talk about race directly (like A Piece of Home), and some are simply about children’s everyday adventures (such as Airport). Here are 18 we like…
Do you have any other recommendations? We’d love to hear.
P.S. Children’s books with female characters, and books to teach kids kindness.
(Top image from the beautiful book Max and the Tag-Along Moon.)
Good Morning Baby (from the What-A-Baby series)
Sir Simon the Super Scarer! My son is named Simon and we love this book!
I love The Coffee Can Kid by Jan Czech (Asian/adoption)
Ruth and the Green Book by Calvin Alexander Ramsey
Mama, Do You Love Me? by Barbara Joosse
NJ teacher Toney Jackson’s books… “I’m Jack, I’m black” and “There’s a button in my belly”
Love the idea behind this, especially since it was linked from your latest post “Where to Donate to Support the Black Lives Matter Movement”.
I noticed that many of the authors are not in fact people of color. To truly support and elevate POC writers and authors, who should have a say in their own race/ethnicity’s portrayal in books and media, can you revise this to include books where at least one of the authors or illustrators are POC?
I came here to say just this. I looked into all these books and found that only one of them is written by a black author (Full, Full, Full of Love). While it’s great to have diversity in books in general, black creators need to be supported in telling their own stories.
I could be wrong because I am just going by what I can find online, but this is what your list looks like to me:
The Bot that Scott built -white author
Ada Twist, Scientist -white authors
Lizard from the Park – white author
One Family -white author
Everywhere Babies – white author
The Airport Book – white author
I Hear a Pickle – white author
The Snowy Day – white author
Monster Trouble! – white author
A Piece of Home – white author
Please update this list to support black writers. Thank you!
If anyone is still looking for a list of children’s books that do have Black authors, here’s a good one:
As far as I can tell all the books featuring Black characters have Black authors. They also link to a list of Black owned bookstores or bookshop.org.
Please, Baby, Please by Spike Lee and Tonya Lewis Lee is adorable for babies/toddlers!
Also, anything by Faith Ringgold.
LOVE this book about an African-American boy and his dad:
https://www.amazon.com/Jabari-Jumps-Gaia-Cornwall/dp/1536202908/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1BB2UKBMORCDG&dchild=1&keywords=jabari+jumps&qid=1591145586&s=books&sprefix=Jabari+Jumps%2Cstripbooks%2C265&sr=1-1
Would love an LGBTQ+ children’s book list–especially since it’s Pride month. I always love your suggestions.
Check out Pride by Rob Sanders.
These books are wonderful and my daughter already has and loves Ada Twist, Scientist. I am wondering if anyone has a recommendation for books with South Asian leading characters. My daughter is South Asian and I would like for her to see herself represented in books but Amy having a challenging time finding anything. Thank you!
Thank you for this article! As per Leila’s comment, I also am having trouble finding resources for South Aisan children.
recent finds:
Stories for South Asian Supergirls
Fairy Folk of Leafy Wood (has South Asian -lookng elves in it)
Anisha Patel, the accidental detective.
Tucking this away for our girl’s birthday in a few months.
Board books my toddler loves with characters of color:
Who? A Celebration of Babies (she is obsessed with this one!)
My Heart Fills With Happiness
Baby Feminists
A is for Activist
Little You
My husband and I love to read her Little You. It’s my go-to gift for baby showers that request books in place of cards.
Everyone Cooks Rice by Norah Dooley. A little girl goes looking for her brother at dinnertime and discovers as she goes from house to house that everyone is cooking a rice dish, and they are all from different cultures.
A wonderful book for kids with sleeping issues that features characters of color is ZZZ Adventures available on blurb.com and apple books https://books.apple.com/mt/book/zzz-adventures/id1092312172
We love ‘If I had a dinosaur’ it’s a really fun, silly book and the illustrations are cute! https://www.amazon.com/If-Had-Dinosaur-Gabby-Dawnay/dp/0500650993
:)
Corduroy – the little girl, Lisa, who purchases the tedddy bear with the missing button and gives him a home, is a lovely person of color.
Joanna- thank you so much for this list. I tucked it away when my biracial daughter was a baby, and went back to it recently to purchase books (every single one from the list!) for her 2nd birthday. We are both so very much enjoying them, and just in a few days of reading them (over and over again… :)) it feels like our little apartment, and our world, has expanded (even amidst the diversity that is already found in manhattan). Is makes me ever so grateful that she is being raised with characters in books that look like her, and with some that look different from both her and the other characters she more regularly sees in picture books (i.e., white kids). So- thanks for this gift to our book collection, and for the mark it is already making on her little world.
that’s so wonderful, anna! i’m so glad to hear that. we also just got this lovely, dreamy one: https://amzn.to/2pIwilS
xoxo
Ming Goes to School by Deirdre Sullivan and Maja Löfdahl
Little Bitty Friends by Elizabeth McPike and Patrice Barton
Lola at the Library by Anna McQuinn and Rosalind Beardshaw
“More, More, More,” Said the Baby by Vera B Williams
Shades of People by Sheila M. Kelly and Shelley Rotner
Jazz Baby by Lisa Wheeler and R. Gregory Christie
These are some books we read to our two year old son. I’m an Adult Services Librarian, and I’m trying to be very intentional about exposing him to a wide variety of characters in his books (he himself is white). It warms my heart reading them to him and seeing him connect to characters, regardless of their race or gender.
Thanks for all these other suggestions, too! What an awesome blog post!
Chirri and Chirra- stunning book about two little Asian girls who have magical adventures on bikes.
You have a great list here and I have these in our library. Just wanted to add a few early chapter books, along with my latest find.
Ling and Ting series by Grace Lin, Katie Woo series and new Pedro series by Fran Manushkin and Jabari Jumps by Gaia Cornwall are all relatively new and all pretty darn wonderful. ( I LOVE Jabari Jumps not only for the multicultural aspect, but also because Dad is the parent in the story, at the pool for a day of fun with his children.) As a children’s librarian in a relatively vanilla area, I try to make sure we have a collection that is a mirror for all children. Everyone likes to see themselves.
We love The New Small Person by Lauren Child.
Yeeeeeees!
My recommendation is Lila and The Secret of Rain. Love love love this one?
Thank you for the list!
I love this list and as a person of color and parent of two, I’m glad authors and publishers are being more inclusive when it comes to race and ethnicity. All of Ezra Jack Keats books are amazing and I can’t wait to check out the other books that I haven’t yet read. Another suggestion: I recently illustrated a book with a character of color titled Over and Under the Pond. http://www.chroniclebooks.com/titles/over-and-under-the-pond.html Hope you enjoy!
We just checked your book out of the library and love it. So, so beautiful.
I’m way late reading this list but we own that book and love it!!! The illustrations are gorgeous, thanks for such a treasure :)
I loved the beautiful and diverse “angels” in The High Rise Glorious Skittle Skat Roarious Sky Pie Angel Food Cake by Nancy Willard.
When my kids were small (it has been a long while) we enjoyed a book from the library that I’ve never been able to find again. A young black boy and his grandpa grew a vegetable garden and magically traveled to the far off places where the vegetables came from. The illustrations were gorgeous & the story so sweet. Anyone recall this book?
I loved this book growing up. I haven’t seen it in years, but it was one of my favorites.
We love children’s picture books!
Corduroy! A favorite of mine, also a favorite of my daughter.
Re: Ada Twist, my daughter loves that series! They also have Rosie Revere Engineer and Iggy Peck, architect (clearly STEM themed). She compares herself to Ada and Rosie when building with Duplos and problem solving. She often requests “Ada Twist buns” in her hair.
Thanks for this list!
Oh, Oh, Baby Boy and You Were the First are two of our faves for my mixed race Asian family.
https://www.amazon.com/Oh-Baby-Boy-Janine-Macbeth/dp/0985351403
https://www.amazon.com/You-Were-First-Patricia-MacLachlan/dp/0316185337/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1482241423&sr=8-1&keywords=you+were+the+first
What book is the the little boy with the golden sun from? Btw great post.
My girls love the book, “Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes.”
Revisited this page after this doozey of a week. Buying up a bunch of these books to donate this holiday season. Thank you again for being a positive force and for being one of the few bloggers not afraid to speak up before election day.
Thank you so much for posting this list! I’m an African American mom to an amazing 10 year old girl. I was VERY passionate about her seeing herself in her books as she grew so I’ve built a pretty cool library over the years consisting of many of the books already mentioned. I must say one of my faves is The Colors of Us by Karen Katz.
A girl and her artist mom take a stroll through the neighborhood to see all the various skin colors of the wonderful people they live around. I love that the book refers to each skin tone so deliciously using words like honey, peaches and chocolate. Somehow we managed to score a giant size of this book. Such a beautiful way to teach about diversity. Still love it!
This one is great too: Aggie and Will (Rookie Readers: Level B) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0516207547/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_JcgaybJGC7S40
I didn’t see them on here when I apple-f’d, so I just thought I’d add:
Everybody Eats Rice – a child visits his neighbors in a multiethnic neighborhood and each of them invite him to taste their own delicious recipes made with rice.
Too Many Tamales – a latin family make tamales for Christmas.
How My Parents Learned to Eat – a child tells the story of how his parents attempted to learn how to eat with different utensils (Japanese and Western) in order to impress the other.
Jamaica Tag Along – a black girl learns to play with others.
This is such a valuable list Joanna! It brings back so many good memories and has also made me aware that I was obsessed with food from a young age.
There is also this fabulous free app called WeReadToo that lists books by authors of color and feature characters of color
We Read Too by Kaya Thomas
https://appsto.re/us/BWUk2.i
Liza Lou and the Yeller Belly Swamp by Mercer Mayer is one of our faves!
Such a great post! Its great to find some great books with people who look like me. Growing up it was always so hard because there were no heroes of color so I always felt torn. Am I meant to be the bad guy? But nope there are apparently a ton of role models out there and luckily we have post like this one to unearth them! Great job!
Thank you for posting this! As a kid, I loved Harvey Potter’s Balloon Farm. http://www.librarything.com/work/316597
I thought you might be interested to know that We Need Diverse Books is releasing an app for diverse books! The database will include tons of books featuring diverse backgrounds :)
Here’s a link if you want to check out more
Anything by Grace Lin especially “Dim Sum for Everyone!” and “The Ugly Vegetables.”
Yes to all the Grace Lin books! We also like the Ling and Ting stories. :)
Ten, Nine, Eight by Molly Bang is one of my 2-year-old’s favorites!
My husband is biracial and his mother read “Black is Brown is Tan” to all 4 of her kids (starting over 40 years ago !) and still gifts the book to families today.
So honored to see some of my books listed here. It’s so important for ALL children to have books that have diverse characters. Happy Reading, everyone!
Sunday Shopping is a fun read.
Twenty Yawns features a biracial child and is so cute.
Raindrop Plop is another fun read (you can also sing it to the tune of “five little ducks”!) and the girl is rather ambiguous racially.
Mary Englebright has diverse illustrations. Her fairy tale anthologies are huge favorites at our home.
Ada Twist, Scientist is also so great for encouraging girls to go into STEM! Love this selection.
This one! It was one of our favourites when my son was little.
It’s by an Australian author and was given as a gift to Prince George from the UK when he was born.
It’s a lovely book to read and look at, with lots of different children.
Thank you so much for this post. We adopted from The Marshall Islands and our daughter has gorgeous coco-skin. I just went to our bookshelves to see what might be there and couldn’t find enough colour! It is a timely reminder that I need to boost the colour scheme of our bookshelves. I went to Amazon and even found a book about The Marshall Islands that I need to order right away.
In order of preference by my 4.5yr old daughter, here’s a few from our recent library run: Those Shoes by Maribeth Boelts, Emma and Julia Love Ballet by Barbara McClintock, The Invisible Boy by Patrice Barton.
Beautiful, thank you!
Courdoroy!
My kids loved The Bake Shop Ghost by Jacqueline Ogburn as well as One Grain of Rice by Demi.
Great list, thank you! We also love Whistle For Willie and Peter’s Chair, by Ezra Jack Keats. My son refers to them as his “Peter Books.”
Thank you for generating this list and conversation, Joanna.
One title we are loving is
Little Kunoichi, The Ninja Girl by Sanae Ishida
https://www.amazon.com/Little-Kunoichi-Ninja-Sanae-Ishida/dp/1570619549
This is such a great list! And next year you can maybe add mine to it! “Jabari Jumps!” Candlewick May 2017. (About a little boy who’s afraid to jump off the diving board. It features his father and baby sister as well.)
I live with boys so my contribution is Walter the Farting Dog by William Kotzwinkle https://www.amazon.com/Walter-Farting-Dog-William-Kotzwinkle/dp/1583940537
Oh my goodness! YES! We die laughing reading the Walter books.
What a thoughtful selection of books to read. I will be collecting these books and reading them to my grandchildren. I do own a few of them.
My bright, pretty, blond white girl moved into chapter books very quickly and I was appalled at how hard it was to find ones she liked that DIDN’T involve the main character being just like her! In the quest to find books to help her learn that being bright, pretty, blond and white DIDN’T make her any more special than anyone else, here are some we enjoyed. You might consider a follow-up chapter book post?
– Sassy: https://www.amazon.com/Sassy-Little-Sister-Not-Name/dp/0545071518 Sharon Draper please write more!
– Nikki & Deja: https://www.amazon.com/Nikki-Deja-Karen-English/dp/0547133626
– Alvin Ho: https://www.amazon.com/Alvin-Ho-Allergic-School-Things/dp/0375849300 (we love you Alvin!)
– Bobby Ellis-Chan: https://www.amazon.com/Bobby-Brave-Sometimes-Vs-Girls
– Zapato Power: https://www.amazon.com/Freddie-Ramos-Takes-Zapato-Power/dp/0807594792
– Get Ready for Gabi: https://www.amazon.com/Get-Ready-Gabi-Marisa-Montes/dp/0439475198
Ten, Nine, Eight is one of my favorite board books for little ones.
This is a great post! As a Chinese American and mother of 2 little girls, it becomes clearer to me every day how important it is to have them surrounded by and exposed to diverse stories.
And for everyone here who may be interested in getting more suggestions like these or simply supporting initiatives that will help increase awareness of diverse children’s lit, I have had the absolute pleasure of working with We Need Diverse Books (www.weneeddiversebooks.org), a nonprofit dedicated to advocating for essential changes to the children’s publishing industry to produce and promote literature that better reflects and recognizes diverse backgrounds and experiences. I know they’ve put out some really comprehensive reading list recommendations for a wide range of age groups and much like this one around the holidays the last couple of years! Hopefully some of you will feel compelled to check them out!
YES they are so great! I especially like their “If you’ve read ____, you’ll like this book” feature.
I have always been an avid reader. My parents always encourage my love of literature, and whether on purpose of not gave me a huge assortment of children’s books with people of color from all over the globe.
One of my favorites was this one:
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9632.Switch_on_the_Night
I’m also mixed, and grew up as one of the only people of color in my school. My hair has always been a huge issue, as no one ever had hair as wild as me. All my friends were white. Then once I met black girls, they all got their hair braided. My mom is white and didn’t know where to start with all of my textures and curls. This book was one of the first times I saw someone depicted with big, beautiful, black hair. Its something I think everyone should be exposed to more. Beauty has many forms.
Hi Joanna!
I wrote “Lailah’s Lunchbox” , an ALA Notable Book, which was published last year! Other stories we enjoy are “My Name is Bilal,” “One Green Apple,” “White Nights of Ramadan,” “golden domes and silver lanterns” and more:)
It may have been mentioned, but Most Loved in All the World by Tonya Cherie Hegamin Is lovely. Slavery + family from the perspective of a little girl. https://www.amazon.com/dp/0618419039/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_yeg9xbVFM9ACE
We love Leo: A Ghost Story. It is the same illustrator as Last Stop on Market Street.
Love this- a beautiful board book (safe for babies!) to add with an Aboriginal author and illustrator is “We Sang You Home” https://www.amazon.ca/Sang-You-Home-Richard-Camp/dp/145981178X
Great post and the one before it on this topic.
Tracks in the Snow by Wong Herbert Yee is the winter volume in a super-cute, four book series about the seasons. They are not about race, but the main character is a little Asian girl. My son loved these books.
https://www.amazon.com/Tracks-Snow-Wong-Herbert-Yee/dp/0312371349
As a child I loved “The Patchwork Quilt” by Valerie Flournoy.
This new book Juana & Lucas by Juana Medina about a little girl from Bogota, Colombia is adorable, exposes the kids to cultural differences and, bonus, another language! We love it. https://www.amazon.com/Juana-Lucas-Medina/dp/0763672084
Juana also illustrated her amazing story about trying to become an American citizen in the WaPo recently if you want to know more behind her story. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/comic-riffs/wp/2016/04/08/gifted-artist-juana-medina-draws-powerfully-upon-her-long-saga-as-an-immigrant-in-america/
The arrival by Shaun Tan – it’s a graphic novel so not specifically for kids, but I am sure kids would love it as well. There are no words, so you make up the story as you go and there are wonderful illustrations and funny animals to point out while you read it. My mother who never reads comics saw it ob my bookshelf and couldn’t put it down and started talking about her own immigration story
Corduroy! Also a wonderful story about not having to be perfect to be a friend.
Joanna, thank you so much for writing posts about this. It’s so important and easy to overlook. While I have no kids myself, but I will definitely be referring back to this post (and comments) for gift ideas for my friends’ children!
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