WEBVTT - This file was automatically generated by VIMEO. Please email info@talestoolkit.com to report problems. So, um, I call this progress ish because the way that things have changed, um, from 2015 to 2018, and I'll show you some newer numbers as well. Uh, the way that things have changed is worth exploring. So what I don't wanna do, I think it's really important, um, it's very easy to look at the numbers shifting between 2015 and 2018 and think, oh, good progress. And I think, um, my blunt answer here is, we are not allowed to feel good right now about the state of children's books and about the state of stories we choose to tell. So, um, and I, I realize there's gonna be like a, a country gap here. So my examples and numbers are often gonna come from America, but it's, uh, the numbers that I'll show you in a, in a slide or two, um, when you scale back globally, they don't change that much. In fact, they, the, the, um, percentages don't change at all. Uh, the numbers just kind of tick up a little bit. So, um, uh, I follow and would encourage anybody who's interested to follow the, um, uh, cooperative. Uh, let me, let me get the, the acronym right? Co I get two of them backwards. Um, cooperative Children's Book Center. I always wanna say Cooperative Center for Children's book. The cooperative, uh, cooperative Children's Book Center is at the University of Wisconsin. And they track, so they, they literally count, um, and they count across a range of metrics. So they count what books are a by or by, um, a person of a particular ethnic minority or, um, or race. And then they also count which books are about a character like that. Um, and there are a couple things worth noting here. So, first, they are willing to count a book as about a character, basically, as long as the character appears on the cover, which means that the numbers are actually probably inflated, right? Because there's all sorts of cases where a character might appear on the color, but not in fact be the protagonist of the story, right? So, um, so it's worth pointing out that the numbers I'm gonna give you are not good and the situation, it's very likely that the situation is actually worse than the numbers are showing. So there's that. Um, the second thing to know is that Kathleen Horning is the director of the CCBC, and she kept finding herself facing this objection. She would present these numbers annually. They track them every year. Uh, children's books, buy children's books about children's books, buy children's books about, and they release their numbers every year. And she kept getting this question, which was, well, but not all children's books are about humans. So there are a couple things, uh, Kathleen Horning in response to this started separating them out. So you can see now that the numbers show how many of the books are about a character that's not a human. So she started separating them to show that the numbers don't get better when you do that. But I think it's worth pointing out that when we're asking, this is why I, I I frame this in terms of seeing ourselves and seeing our world when we're asking to be seen, or when we're asking to be able to see. It doesn't work to say, I realize I'm not presenting characters who look this way, but I am giving you talking animals. So pretty much the same. It's not the, it's not the same, right? If we think about what children's literature does in our lives, it shapes our moral, uh, it, it shapes our moral imagination. It shapes our understanding of our world and our place in it. Um, in the United States at least, right? We have the long shadow of housing segregation. We have a long shadow of school segregation. Um, Martin Luther King Jr. Called 11:00 AM Sunday Morning, the most segregated hour in America, because religious ceremonies are also racially segregated. So, in America in particular, you're not likely to encounter people who don't look like you at school. You're not likely to encounter people who don't look like you at church. You're not likely to encounter people who don't look like you in your neighborhoods. Where you might is in books. And I will say, I won't, if you wanna come back to this later, I'm happy to talk more about it. I, the argument does generalize in media. So I focus on books because I love books. Um, and I think that books generate kind of imaginative activities for children that TV and movies don't. But e either way, the, the argument does generalize. Um, so it doesn't work. It is not an appropriate substitute for a multidimensional, say, a multidimensional black person. It is not appropriate to say, well, this book has a truck that's, that's horrifying. Um, so for what it's worth, I think Kathleen Horning's response of saying like, okay, I'm just gonna track the numbers and show you that that doesn't make anything better. I think that was a very gracious response. I am not that gracious. Um, but I did wanna show you that there's some, so I, so I wanna, uh, give, contextualize these shifts from 2015 to 2018, um, because at the time that this shift is happening, um, America at least is, um, in kind of the beginning throws, right? If you're following the news this week, you'll know that we're still very much in the throes. We will be in the throes for a long time, but we're in the beginning throes of what might be a real reckoning with who we are and our history and our present. We're in the beginning of a real, like, oh, this is bad, right? We are starting to have a national conversation about race. So we expect to see a change. And so it's not surprising that you see, for instance, uh, the percentage of books about an African American character go from 7.6 to 10%, right? We would expect to see the needle move because there was public pressure to move that needle. So we expect to see the needle move. But what I want you to pay attention to in these graphics is two things. The first is, I want you to look at who got the biggest boost in representation, the biggest book in representation, the biggest boost in representation went to animals, trucks, talking robots, those sorts of things. Um, that's not great, right? That's not to say there's anything wrong with those books. Um, it's to say it's really hard to make a claim that we're making progress when the group experiencing the biggest increase in meaningful representation in children's literature is talking animals. It's very hard to say that that's progress. The second thing that the CCBC started doing with this graphic that I really wanna draw your attention to, it's a very deliberate choice. If you're looking not just at the numbers, but the graphic, you'll see one of the things I'm gonna talk about, which is that the, the children featured in this graphic who are not white, are looking at broken or distorted images of themselves, right? So what I want you to do is look at what the white child sees in these images, right? So the white child sees himself, but like, look at his mirror representation relative to him, right? He looks like a king. That's not an accident. He looks like a king, looks like kingfish, right? Despite being the global minority, he, he sees himself as the king. Uh, he sees a disco ball. He sees himself as an astronaut. He sees himself as an athlete. He sees himself in all these ranges of ways. The animal's pretty happy, too. It's a good day to be a talking animal. They're getting dynamite representation. But now look at the other four children. Uh, their mirrors are broken, they're distorted in all sorts of ways. And what I wanna do is talk to you about the way that the numbers problem is causing that dis it's, it's driving that distortion. Um, and, and the numbers problem. So the upshot of all of this is gonna be that we have to work really hard as consumers, as educators. We have to think really hard about what stories we want our children to see and what imaginative exercises we want them to do. Um, and the reason we have to work hard is because the numbers don't make that a natural. The the numbers don't make that naturally easy, right? So we have to work really hard. This, okay? So I mentioned that the CCBC tracks not just, um, who the books are about, but who's writing and illustrating the books. And so I would encourage you if you're on Twitter or Instagram, uh, to follow the hashtag own voices. So one of the things that's happening, I'll show you some more numbers in a minute. One of the things that's happening is that while the number of books about, say, a black character or, um, a Latino character or what have you, those numbers are ticking up slightly, but then the change in authorship is not right. Um, and so, so if you see that like only 5% of children's books published in 2018 were about a Latino character, and then you see that of those 5%, just over half of those were written by somebody who identifies with that character. So what were the other half writing? I say that, by the way, fully aware that I'm like a co-author of a children's book where the, the protagonist is a black child. And I'll say more about that in a bit. But you have a situation where the people writing the books don't live those experiences. Now, does that mean that they can't write the books? No. Does it mean that we should be surprised when there's distortion of representation? No. Right? That's not a terribly surprising outcome. Okay? So here's what, if you go to the CCBC website, you'll see loads and loads of, you can break this down by year. You can, you can look at the United States, um, and then you can scale out to the rest of the, the world. Most of the books they receive every year are published in the United States. Um, so that's why I, that's, that's why I have this, this particular focus. Um, and you'll see how they break these numbers down, right? That here's, here's the number of books by, here are the number of books about, right? So you have a situation where in a country that's in the throes of a national reckoning on race, we get 3,700 children's books published that year, and only 224 of them are about a black character, or sorry, about only 451 of them are about a black character, and only half of those are written by a black person. This is, this is why I say progress ish. I think there's a tendency, at least on this side of the pond, there's a tendency to look at the numbers changing and say, oh, it's progress. And I think it's really important to contextualize the way those numbers are changing. Okay? Now, I'm gonna talk in a minute about why I think this matters for consumers and educators, but kind of a common response I get is like, well, this has to do with the market. This has to do with what, what books are out there? I don't disagree. I think the market bears a lot of responsibility. I think that the production side of the consumer chain, um, needs to really step up their game. Um, but I'm almost never talking to publishers. I'm almost never given an opportunity to talk to book reviewers or publishers. I am frequently given an opportunity to talk to consumers of children's books or educators. So I'm gonna say a bit about the industry, but that's really not my focus, right? So again, this is a shift from 2015 to 2019. Uh, Lee and Lowe Books does an industry analysis every, uh, I think every year at the very least, every few years. Um, and so you can see these sorts of shifts. I'm happy to share these slide. I mean, Kate's welcome to share these slides if you'd like. Um, so you can see the numbers shift here, but I wanna look a little closer at where the changes are happening in the industry. So if you look in 2019, 80% of book reviewers are, are white people, uh, 78% cis women, 76% straight, 81% non-disabled, right? At sort of the gatekeeping stage, the numbers don't look very good, right? Again, not terribly surprising. And I, I have like a theory about why this is happening, um, that I'll talk about in just a second. But I did wanna say like, yeah, the publishing industry has a long way to go. There's no question about that. What I wanna do is encourage consumers and educators to put pressure on the publishing industry. I wanna encourage consumers and educators to signal with their choices, with their, with their money, with whatever resources they have. I wanna say the market is gonna respond to market signals. And so we need to make sure that we're showing that if you put these books on the market, they will be successful, right? We, for better or worse, that's the way to make the pitch, um, at the market side. Okay? But lemme step back for a second and talk about, um, why I think these numbers are really troubling. So, if you have a situation where, um, 50% of the books as of 2018 are gonna be about a white person, if you've got a children's book, there's a 50% chance it's a white person, right? Which gives, gives better odds that it's about a white person than anything else that sets the default, right? So default setting, I think, is morally really important. We have to pay attention to where the defaults get set. And the reason for that is that defaults tell us what's normal. And so defaults tell us like, what violates our expectations? Why does that matter? So he, so I'll say more about this, um, but I have these two quotes that I love so much. So Christopher Myers and his father, Walter Dean, have both written for the New York Times. Um, they're, they're both in, in, uh, children's literature. Um, they have written, uh, fairly extensively for the New York Times about what they call the apartheid of children's literature, right? And the way Christopher Myers describes this is he says, this is a situation in which ca characters of color are limited to the townships of occasional historical books that concern themselves with the legacies of civil rights and slavery, but are never given a pass card to traverse the lands of adventure, curiosity, imagination, or personal growth, right? So if you think about those mirrors, the images of how children see themselves in books, you'll see that white children see themselves reflected in all sorts of ways, right? They get to have all kinds of adventure, ordinary, and extraordinary. They get to go out and be astronauts or comedians or presidents or like just kids who are annoyed by having a younger sibling or whatever. And most of the books that are about, for instance, a black character are about civil rights slavery, right? That like over overcoming the language of overcoming, which I'll, I'll talk about more. But my favorite quote came from, uh, Mia Birdsong, who wrote a phenomenal, um, article about, um, right? It's called Two Rules for My Daughter's Library. And one of the things she said is she said, the world is gonna show my kid plenty of white people. Um, uh, sorry, I just glanced at the chat. Yes, there's so many good things going on. Um, the world is gonna show my daughter plenty of white people, white people. So I don't have to worry about accommodating that in my library, in my library. I want to show her people who look like her. I want to show her people who look like her excelling in all sorts of ways, having all kinds of life experiences. Um, and she has this quote that I think is so powerful about what happens when the, when, when we set the default is white. So she says, I found us there in the crowd shots, a token in the classroom, or maybe the spunky best friend just left of center stage. When I did find us featured, we couldn't play baseball unless we were integrating the league. We couldn't do our hair unless we loved our hair. We couldn't have dinner with our family unless we were celebrating a cultural tradition. Books about people of color, just being people are particularly rare, so to speak, kind of more formally about why it matters if we set defaults, right? I wanna talk about the effects of defaults, and it's already come up in the chat. So I wanna say, um, in this part of the talk, I'm gonna mention a couple of other areas at the end, but in this part of the talk, I focus on race. But those of you who are flagging that this generalizes to, yes, yes, default setting is morally powerful, and it others right default saying this is normal. Others, anything that doesn't fit that mold. And this is especially troubling if we have set the mold as a heterosexual, cisgender, white-skinned boy with, with I guess what we would say typical mental and physical abilities, perhaps even extraordinary, right? Well, we've just othered everybody who doesn't fit that mold, which is like most of the world's population, right? So we have a really weird situation where we are treating as normal something that's the minority, and it's, it's contributing to, uh, implicit bias against, it's contributing to, um, othering and marginalization of, in fact, most people on the planet. So here are some of the worries I have about setting defaults. And, and in this context I'm talking about race. But again, like I think this matters for setting the default as, um, um, an able-bodied child. I think it matters for setting the default as a heteronormative family with two parents and, you know, 2.5 children and a pet. All, you know, these defaults really matter. Um, I think the defaults matter in terms of how people are dressed and whether that signals that they are or are not, um, adherence to particular religious doctrines, right? Um, so, so some of the effects of defaults are that we end up with one dimensional characters. So when a character's identity defines defies a norm or violates a default, we expect answers like, why? So, um, there are two cases in particular from not children's books, but then one from like the move from a book to a movie I'll talk about. Uh, so, so, and, and so here's two non children's bookcases In 2014, um, Annie was Rereleased with Que and Johnny Wallace in the key role. Uh, vulture Magazine pans the movie. It says, um, you know, this was a huge missed opportunity. They, they had a chance to put an African American slant on a very well-known story. If you think about what that review is saying, that review is saying, they never told us why Annie is black. That's what's wrong with the movie. What's wrong with the movie is they rereleased Annie with a black actress as Annie, and then they never told us why. What kind of question is that? Nobody was asking before why Annie was white. No one was asking that question, right? That is a question born from the default that is to say, introducing this skin color into this character line raised questions for me and you didn't answer them. And that's a failure on the part of the story. But if the story bears the task of answering that question, it's gonna reduce that character to that issue, right? There's, it's gonna make the story about answering the question, why is Annie Black? It means that we're no longer telling the story of Annie. We're telling a story about blackness. And to be clear, I think stories about blackness are incredibly valuable. This is not an argument against those stories. It is to say, we shouldn't see black people only when we're gonna talk about issues of civil rights or slavery, or whatever the case may be, right? Um, similarly, uh, the live Action Little Mermaid is supposed to be released soon featuring a black ariel. My daughter is b Blissed out of her sweet little mind over this, because of course, in the Disney, in the Disney repertoire, we don't have a lot of good stuff to go with, right? Yeah. There's the princess and the Frog, and for 75% of that movie, we see a frog instead of the princess. We're not lot good to go on. So very excited about this live action. A a live animation Little Mermaid, except that the response was, why are we casting a black, actually, it's a mermaid. That's what you find implausible. It's a mermaid. Um, similarly, as most of you're probably familiar with, right? There was a good bit of controversy, uh, in the move to cast a black actress as Hermione, right? Herbie Granger, legendary role. People were really outraged. And I wanna maintain that the reason people are outraged is, is in part because the default is set so powerfully that when that default gets violated, we wanna know why it got violated. So it's not that we, it's not that, it's not that consumers will necessarily object, though many of them will, but it's that even consumers who aren't objecting have this kind of question mark, why did this happen? This isn't what I was expecting to see. Why is it not? And then there's this burden put on the story to answer that question. And when the story answers the question, it reduces the character, right? The character becomes a vessel to tell this other story that the, the, the, the story is no longer about the person. The story is about this other thing. You were using the the person as like a tool to get to, and that's really troubling. I also think defaults trigger imagination failures, right? Um, and, and if I were pitching to publishers, I would not call these imagination failures. I would call them marketing failures, right? We expect stories, um, about someone who is not that heterosexual, cisgender, white skinned, typically abled boy. Uh, we expect stories that are about anything that's not that to appeal to others who identify with the character, but we don't treat them like universally appealing stories, right? Whereas when books or movies or whatever feature a default, right? They're advancing the default, not challenging it, we treat those as though those are universally marketable. We treat those as though all consumers, all children will be able to identify with this character. Some children will be able to identify with the black character, but that's an imaginative failure. That is, that is absolutely an imaginative failure. And, uh, it worries me quite a lot because one of the things children's literature does for us and does for children, is it helps them cultivate empathy and understanding, right? It does a like, put yourself in someone else's shoes, put yourself in someone else's. It's just this constant it. Martha Nussbaum says, even twinkle twinkle little star. How I wonder what you are right? Is like, yeah, what, what is it like to be a twinkly little star up in this? Right? We're triggering imagination, which is itself really crucial for empathy and understanding. And something goes wrong if we treat stories about, for instance, white children as universally appealing, but we only think that stories about black children will be appealing to black children, right? We're not triggering that same kind of imaginative exercise, that same kind of empathy development. So sad. And then there's also an engagement failure. And this one is admittedly a hard one to talk about. This week, this has been a very challenging week in the United States, um, uh, with more police brutality cases. Um, but we also, setting the default causes engagement failures. And what I mean by that is we don't remember to challenge the default until something happens that makes us challenge the default. So in the United States, for instance, the murder of George Floyd recently did this. Netflix and Disney Plus both released a classification of movies and shows on the black experience for a brief time. If you logged into Disney Plus or Netflix, that was the first thing you saw when you logged in. The classification's still there, but you have to search for it now. It's no longer upfront why it only got moved upfront because we were asked to think about it, right? We were, the default is so powerful that if nobody is saying to us, Hey, have you thought about like what kinds of experiences you are engaging with, what kinds of imaginative or empathy development exercises you're engaging with? If, if there aren't events triggering us to be deliberate about it, it's too easy to forget it, right? Defaults are just defaults normal. It's what you see all the time. So it's easy to not think about it very much. Okay? In my own experience, one quick thing I wanna get around is people sometimes say, I don't think the numbers are that bad. Um, right? So one thing people will say is, for instance, uh, this is a very common one. Well, 13% of the American population is black, so numbers aren't that bad, right? Pretty close. And I think first of all, that's actually a pretty sizable gap. 3% kind of big, right? 3% makes up half the Pacific contingency. Um, but some of the numbers are really very bad, right? So in the United States, for instance, a quarter of the children in the United States are Hispanic or Latino, but only 5% of children's books are about children who look like that. Uh, but here's what I really wanna say. I really wanna say this is deeper than the numbers. I wanna say. This isn't about getting like an accurate representation. It's not like you can't scale back and say like, okay, so the population of this country is X and so, and it's broken down this way. And so that's what the liter, that's what children's literature market should look like. It should just map on to what the actual demographics are. No, first of all, the numbers set defaults, right? So again, it's the broken mirror problem. It's not just a question of how often children see someone who look like themselves or look like someone different or their bodies move differently, or their brains work differently, or their families look different. It's not just about how often they see that it's about how it's presented to them when they see it. So there are some books about children's children who are differently abled, and those books frequently feature that those books frequently feature a storyline about like overcoming the disability, which again, like, that's gonna reduce that character to the disability. The disability is not a thing about that character. The disability and the character are just the same thing. And that's really problematic in terms of how we go out and interact with humans that we encounter. But at least, at least like 25% of the characters we'll see are talking trucks. So we'll be ready when we encounter talking trucks. We'll know that talking trucks are multidimensional, but we won't know that the person who works next to us is, it's just a, it's sad. Um, and one of the reasons I think it's sad is that children's literature is an imaginative world. And I think it's a fairly damning indictment that our imaginations are predominantly white. That our, that our imaginations have like one style of family. Um, or that if we have a different style of family, we need to explain it, uh, that our imaginations, everybody's, everybody's bodies move and operate in exactly the same way. How boring is that? That's, I, I think that's really sad that our imaginative world has set the defaults that powerfully. But the other thing is that, the other thing I wanna say about the numbers is even if you matched numbers perfectly, even if you did some weird breakdown such that like every group receives representation in literature equal to their representation in the general population, the problem is that in the general population, there's a glaring overrepresentation of white individuals. A a glaring overrepresentation of heterosexuals, a glaring overrepresentation of able bodied persons a g, right? It just, the list goes on and on and on and on and on. So, back to Mia Birdsong's point, like the world is giving plenty of examples of these types of cases. Why can't children's literature be an imaginative world where everybody gets to see themselves and children get to see themselves and others having ordinary and extraordinary adventures? Right? Seems like a good idea. Okay? The more practical part, I have loads, loads of book recommendations. So this is really like, this is like my top list. Um, but I am more than happy to send the full list to anybody who is interested. Um, so I will, so, so here are some of the books, and they, they kind of hint at some issues. So Benny goes up, up, up, uh, because I'm gonna shamelessly self-promote this book. Um, we put a ton of time into this book and our, what we wanted, what I wanted was I wanted a family that looks like mine. So my child, who at the time we, we, um, uh, we had assigned male at birth, right? Um, so at the time my child went by the name Ben, uh, didn't see a family that looked like ours ever, right? Uh, one white mom, one brown skin child. We just didn't, that wasn't out there. There were books about adoption where that were like bears that have different furs or what, again, though, it's meaningful to see yourself in a book. So that was one of our key things. But then we also, uh, and we worked very closely with the illustrator. We wanted the world that Benny is navigating to look like the world Benny navigates. So there are people who wear, um, different headdresses. There are different family structures, there are differently abled children there are, right? We, we wanted the world that Benny navigates in that book to be exactly as colorful and exciting as the actual world is, right? Um, so there's that A to twist scientist. I love anything Andrea Beatty writes, I'm gonna buy, I love all of the Andrea Beatty lineup. Um, ADA Twist is one of my favorites, uh, in no small part because it's about a young girl with brown skin, but also because she wants to be a scientist. Um, and she, the, but also because I love children's books, you should know I have a high bar for what counts as good. Like it can't just meet these kind of metrics I worry about here. It has to be something I actually enjoy reading to my child, because I think many children's books are, are mind numbing. So an Andrea Beatty has nailed this. Like, everything she kicks out is just, it has beautiful rhythm. Um, the most recent one, Sophia Valdez Future Pre is just like perfection in a children's books book. Um, Julian is a Mermaid by Jessica Love. This is a really serious favorite for me. So when we talk about the ways that this kind of generalizes to other cases, one of the ways is gender identity and expression. And there are a handful of books, um, excuse me. There are a handful of books that feature, for instance, a boy who likes to wear dresses. Very few of those are about transgender children. They are in fact like a boy who likes to wear dresses. Uh, there is, I am Jazz, which is phenomenal. Um, but the other concern I have, so two of the more prominent books that often get picked up here is, uh, are Morris Michaelle White in the Tangerine Dress, and Jacob's New Dress. Both of these are phenomenal books. I love them. Both of the books spend a good bit of time focusing on other people's reactions to Morris and Jacob. So there are fellow classmates who don't understand, but at least in one case come around later, they come around later and see that it doesn't matter what you wear. Um, so there's a lot of, which is again, really valuable. I'm not saying that kind of story is bad or troubling or anything. I'm saying that Julian is a, mermaid does something different. Julian is a young boy who sees mermaids, like people dress up as mermaids and he goes home to his grandmother's, and he wants to be a mermaid. So he pulls down her curtains and he ties it around his, his waist, and then he gets a plant and he makes it a headdress. And then his grandmother gives him a pearl necklace and takes him out to join the other mermaids. That's, it's the whole story. There's no normalization of bullying. There's no, it's, it's, it's a world in which, it's a world in which people aren't questioning that. Now, again, there's real value to talking through the questions a child might experience. There's real value to giving voice to children's own confusion if they experience that. So I'm not trying to say those other stories are bad. I'm trying to say there's something especially magical about a book that normalizes the wearing of the dress rather than normalizing the scrutiny about the wearing of the dress. The name Jar, I think is phenomenal. It's a little long. So if you're interested in this kind of thing, um, it, I would say it's like I would, I would encourage maybe six years and up. Um, but it's a, it's a great book. Um, it's a child who's a Korean immigrant, uh, and is going through the process of like, people not being able to pronounce her name, but her name is really meaningful to her. Um, and it's, it's such a, it's such a good story. It's a great story of friendship. Um, it's just delightful. Do you know Valentine and the fantastic fashion adventure is one we found courtesy of Covid when authors were reading their books on YouTube. Eva Chen mercifully read this book, um, and my daughter just couldn't believe it. Um, Juno Valentine her fantastic fashion adventure, uh, throughout the story. It's just pure imagination. Um, but she's going from incredible woman to incredible woman, like taking fashion advice from them. But the fashion advice is framed in terms of like, this makes me feel brave. This makes me feel strong. This, it's, it's wonderful. She goes to Michelle Obama and, uh, Simone Biles and Beyonce and Grace Jones, and it's just, it's a phenomenal story with like, just great imagination involved. Please, baby, please. I love for very, very, very young children. Uh, it's got a really nice rhythm, beautiful art, just stunning art. Uh, the new small person, this is like adventures ordinary and extraordinary. The new small person is a kid getting used to having a younger sibling, but in this case, it's a family with brown skin getting used to that. The skin you live in and our skin a first conversation about race, I wanna include these, especially our skin. I think our skin is amazing because one of the things I wanna convey is I really don't mean that we shouldn't be talking directly about race, or we shouldn't be talking directly about physical ability. We shouldn't be talking directly about genders or family structures. I think those are great stories, but I think if we're gonna do it, we need to have thoughtful conversations with our kids about it, right? Not reductive conversations. So we need to not be in a situation where like, the only time race is introduced is if we're reading a book about Jackie Robinson, right? Um, and our skin and the skin you live in our skin, especially the skin you live in, is just a neat, like, here are all different colors of skin, right? Uh, and so it, it kind of breaks the ta like in a very lighthearted way, just breaks the taboo in about talking about skin color and race. Our skin, a first conversation about race goes a step further to talk about the way skin color operates in our societies, um, in a very kid friendly way. So it's a really, really useful tool to have those more direct conversations. Uh, okay, those are my suggestions and I'm gonna move to questions or discussion or anything, anything I can say. Uh, can you hear me now? Yes. Yes. I was on mute for a minute. Um, Sue was asking, what does Brin suggest to help schools and teachers move forward with these issues? Um, I think that's a great question. Mm-Hmm. Uh, there are some, so my straightforward answer is just make sure there are better books in the classroom. Yes. Um, I also, uh, in terms of moving forward with the, so, so for one thing, I want to acknowledge that it's not without complications to just have better books in the classroom. Like that's, that, I get that that sounds like a simple suggestion, but here, for instance, uh, the state of North Carolina tried to put Jacob's new dress in their state curriculum, and the outrage was so swift and so ferocious. Wow. Uh, they dropped it because parents were really objecting. Um, there are court cases in Canada where teachers asked for, for instance, books featuring families that had same sex parents. Mm-Hmm. Uh, parents objected in, in Canada, the teacher won. Okay, good. That's nice news. That's good. Um, I do think, so there's two things. So insofar as there's this kind of, at least here, there's this like political tension about like what you can and can't do in a classroom. Uh, there are so many books where meaningful diversity and inclusion is happening as a background condition of the book, but it's not a feature of the, it's not what the book is about. Yes. Um, that I think that's one kind of clever way to sneak it in Mm-Hmm. Without running into like outrage and, and politics battles, right? Is to, is to have books where you can plausibly say, look, this is a story about a kid playing basketball Mm-Hmm. Yet he has two dads. But that's not like that, that's not a conversation where, you know, it's just because it's still performing a really meaningful imaginative exercise for kids. Right. It's still getting used to, it's still getting kids used to seeing this. Yes. Um, the second thing I think, and this is, this is much harder. So like for all I just said, like, here are some sneaky ways to avoid conflict. Um, this one's just straightforward conflict. So one of the things I think about defaults is that our language sustains defaults as much as the images and stories we choose. Mm-Hmm. So for instance, I still do this, you just heard me do it in the talk. If I'm talking about a black person, I refer to them as a black person, but I don't say white person. Right? Like in, in typical I would in this conversation, because I'm explicitly talking about yes. Skin colors or whatever, but if I were out in the world, I basically use history or, or I use person to mean white person, right? Yeah. Which just is a default. Yes. Um, and so one of the things I would encourage teachers to do is start saying things like white or able bodied or, uh, cog, uh, neurotypical or, um, heterosexual or cisgender or what, so that it's not so that we don't have like this sort of semantic othering that happens. And the neat thing is that it opens up room for lots of conversations in books, right? Mm-Hmm. It opens up loads of conversations for like, okay, so this character is, um, white and able-bodied. How might this story be different? Mm-Hmm. If the character were, and then just, you know, fill in whatever you want to how, even things as simple as like, how would this be different if the character were a girl? Mm-Hmm. Yeah. Right. Like, um, and so one thing I would really encourage teachers to do is think about the way that the way we talk also sets defaults. Um, and the way we frame things. Like, I, I think, Kate, you and I have talked about this in the past, but I can't remember Mm-Hmm. Uh, so for instance, February in the United States is Black History Month. Mm-Hmm. Um, which first of all, it's like that's the shortest month. Yeah. We Have, we have October here. Yeah. Well, we pitched the shortest month of the year, so well done. Yeah. Um, but also that's to imply that there's history and then there's black history Mm-Hmm. Um, which also takes pressure off of education systems to incorporate in meaningfully inclusive ways. Yes. It's that one month, Those stories throughout the year, right? Mm-Hmm. It's just like by itself, it's like, well, and there's, then there's, and at least here black history is framed in terms of civil rights and slavery. So it's not framed in terms of like, or as somebody once said, like, uh, I think Tahi Coates puts it this way, like kind of an encyclopedic list of firsts. Mm-Hmm. Right. But not like real persons who just kinda all along. Right. I mean, I frequently think like Hidden Figures made so many people go like, oh, I had no idea. Mm-Hmm. 'cause it was never taught. And why would, you know? Yes. That's not a thing. We, if you only have a month, you can't teach everything. Yes. Um, so I think, I think teachers really thinking about the ways that their classroom and their bookshelves and their language sustain those defaults rather than push back on them. Yeah. Yeah. That's really interesting, Bri, because I think like what you're saying about making it just because I think that's really important. And like when you're saying about talking about white children in stories and able bodied and things, I think it's when you have a story where you've got someone who's disabled or in a wheelchair or it's black, you do very much point that out and children will talk about that, or the teacher will make that a point because they found a book that's got that token person in it that they've been looking for so hard. So yeah. Yeah. I think that's really, really key. Yeah. I think pushing away from tokenism, so I, I basically think we have to fix the numbers and default part to fix the tokenism. Mm-Hmm. Um, so like, one thing I frequently think about in my non children's book literature, right. Or, or academic work. Uh, I teach, for instance, issues of deaf culture. Mm-Hmm. Right. So one thing that's nice is if you kind of look around the world and realize all the ways that hearing people built it Yes. And that it could have been built differently, right? We could have designed so many things differently Mm-Hmm. And so I think it's really important, um, that yeah, we don't want to include books about somebody who's black, just like to be like, okay, okay, now we've covered the black child, or now we've covered the child in a wheelchair, now we've cut. Right? Like, we wanna include these stories because they are stories, and stories are interesting. Yes. Um, and so I think kind of the, the more we push to include those, the more we push back on defaults Yes. The less likely we are to run into a tokenism. Yeah. Yeah. That's good. Yeah. Um, Michelle's asking, how do you suggest authors acknowledge difference but seamlessly recognize and inclusion of all? Yeah. I think that's such a good question. Um, And I think this is actually, 'cause I know that we've got practitioners here that are you really is practitioners, like they're creating the authors of the future. So I think these are the people that if you can, if you can answer this well, Brin Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. There's creating some authors there. Okay. So I have an answer that's gonna be not terribly satisfying and I wish more satisfying way to say this. Um, but one thing I think is like, again, it has to do with pushing back on the defaults. So one reason, it's like one reason it reduces characters to a single dimension right now Mm-Hmm. Is because we're so not used to talking about any of these issues in like, social settings that it sort of takes all the air in the room to do it right now. Right. So, like we are, at least at the moment, and I, I think we're a long way off from my dream world where this isn't true, but at least at the moment we're at a place where like, once you introduce race into the story, it's a story about race. Or once you introduce different, different abilities into it, it's a story about Right. Like we're, we are so early in the taboo breaking in terms of like learning to talk comfortably about these things. I didn't, you know, in the interest of full disclosure, I did not. I I would never have been able to talk about race before my child was born. Like, it just, it's so, it's just socially conditioned right out me uhhuh. Um, and so there's so much stress and anxiety built up about this Mm-Hmm. Um, and so what I kind of wanna say is like the more we talk about it casually mm-Hmm. Then the more casually it can emerge in stories. Yes. Right. Um, because one thing that I want to avoid is like, I don't wanna set whiteness as a norm either. Mm-Hmm. Like as a transcendental. So, so I don't think the appropriate response to inclusion is to include a bunch of different people, but then like, put them in a white person mold, like feature them in a star. Right. Like, um, and I do think Right, things like the body, you're in the skin color, you have, they, they act they shift your experience of things in ways we should acknowledge we shouldn't act like they don't. Yes. Right. That's, that's how we got here. So we acted like if we just ignored the differences, they weren't real. Yes. So my kind of dream answer is that we all start talking more casually including authors, right? Mm-Hmm. Note differences, talk about differences, but like, as a feature of the story, not the story. Right? Yes. Um, and, and my hope is that the more we do that, that it's, that it's again similar to the tokenism thing, that the more we do that, the more we get comfortable with that. Yes. Uh, the more those can be features of our discussions rather than like take all the, all the air in the room. Mm-Hmm. That makes a lot of sense. No, that was a good answer, Bri. All good. Um, so I've got another one here saying, Michelle's asking, do you think social media has impacted this? Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Um, In many ways for the better, right? So in, in many ways, I think social media at, at least in a lot of circles is what's pushing people to think a lot more carefully. Mm-Hmm. Um, and, and in particular there are some dynamite social media accounts. Right. So like, the conscious kid is one of my favorite social media accounts in the world. Yeah. Um, especially because like, it's just in short snippets like dropping these just education bombs on you every few minutes. Yeah. Um, so I think social media has helped in some ways. I also think that as is, as is typical of social media, it's an outrage machine. Mm-Hmm. Um, and so it amplifies that. Like I have no doubt that that Jacob's new dress would've survived North Carolina parents outrage absent social media. Yeah. Right. Yes. They, they, they had a, they had a PR machine, like Mm-Hmm. Pre on delivery on their computer. So Yeah. So yes. Big fat. Yes. On that one. Um, does anybody else have any questions while we've got Brynn with us here tonight? Um, we were talking earlier about stories kind of opening up conversations and like about bigger issues. I dunno if you wanna kind of talk a little bit about, about that. Yeah. You've touched on it a little bit already, but kind of how to go about those conversations. And it's probably like you said, just dropping in those words and picking up on things and stories, all Those words. Giving kids space to ask questions. Yes. I think it's really big. I think Mm-Hmm. Kids this, the social conditioning, right. Um, yes. Uh, Beverly, Daniel Tatum has this great example where she talks about like a mother in a grocery store whose kid says, why is that person skin dirty? And the mother says, shh. Yeah. But like the kid's question didn't go anywhere. Right. The kid learned not to ask it. Yes. The question didn't go anywhere. Yes. And so I think kids have questions Mm-Hmm. And giving them the space to ask those questions and engage in it. And I also think this isn't like practical strategy, but it is a, I think a moral consideration we all have to have. Yeah. Um, sometimes parents have this feeling that kids are too young. Yes. And I think, you know, this is me speaking as a person and not an academic, but I think, like, I have a transgender black daughter, she does not have the luxury of not having hard conversation. Like Yes. Where it's, there's very much a sense in which we're like preserving the innocence of white children by not having these really hard conversations Yes. And doing so in a way that makes the world more dangerous and less inclusive for lots of people. Yeah. Mm-Hmm. Um, so, so, you know, my, my actual practical advice is like I say, go direct. Yeah. I say honest and direct. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's really good advice. 'cause I know, like you were saying before, I think it's a really awkward thing for a lot of people to speak about and, and children don't have that awkwardness that we have. Like when you've got children in early years, they'll, they'll ask it. Like if they've got a question, they'll ask it and they'll say it in a way that we are like, oh, they can't say that, but they can and, and we should chat with them about it. Yeah, Absolutely. Sure. Yeah. Um, you know, we had, so here's like a, a real world example that's funny to me. So we have, we're a blended family now. Yes. And so we have one white daughter and one black daughter, and, um, an event of police brutality, the, the George Floyd murder happened and we were talking about it because Mm-Hmm. We talk about these things. Yes. Um, and our white daughter said, if I saw a police officer doing that, I would run up and hit him. Mm-Hmm. And then the younger daughter who is black said, me too. And my husband and I both immediately, like, we hadn't said anything to the white daughter when she'd said it. Yes. But when our black daughter said it, we immediately were like, no, no, no, no, no, no. Right. Like, yeah. And I think like it's, I, it's, to us it's really important for our white daughter Mm-Hmm. To understand the ways that she's gonna benefit from a system that like, because that's the only way she's gonna be able to resist that system benefiting her. Yes. And disadvantaging. And so I'm, I'm, I'm just a big fan of like, we we're raising tiny humans. Yes. And it's need to treat them like whole persons Mm-Hmm. Um, and teach them, like these are systems, sometimes you benefit from them, sometimes you don't. What might we do about that? What would be some things? Yeah, that's it. Well, we find a lot with tell's toolkit that the things, the questions that children have will come out in stories. So it's quite interesting for us because with tell's toolkit, you can't put anything in a story. So it could be a picture of you or your mum, or it could be a tour, or it could be, it could be anything at all. But you find out that those things that the children are trying to make sense of will come out in the stories. Yeah. So for us, it's quite interesting that that can then facilitate a lot of these conversations with children just through the stories that they create and they tell themselves. Yeah. For sure. Yeah. Yeah. So it's cool. Um, brilliant. Okay, I think we're coming to the end now. Brinn. Um, I've just got loads of comments coming through. Everyone's saying that it's kind of like agreeing with what you're saying, that it shouldn't be awkward. These conversations should be natural. Um, stories are really powerful for children. Um, have you done any research, I'm just thinking about kind of the longer term impacts of children not seeing themselves represented in stories. Yeah, I have. Um, and there's actually some great, so I work on the philosophy side, so I try to say Mm-Hmm. Like, here's a lot to do about it. Yes. Um, but my ought to realize really heavily, there's some great literature on, and, uh, there's some great psychological research on, um, oddly enough, Harry Potter, uh, isn't like not seeing yourself represented. Yes. Uh, but, but replicated studies have shown that children at any age Yes. Read the Harry Potter series and either identify with Harry or Disidentify with Voldemort, which is like the lowest bar to clear, right? Yes. Um, those children after finishing the Harry Potter series have more favorable views of immigrants, homosexuals, and refugees despite none of those groups appearing in the book. Um, and the hypothesis is that it's because you see people. Um, so we know that like, if you know somebody who's different from you, you're less afraid of differences. And if you know somebody who knows somebody who's different from you, that also impacts it. But now it looks like we get like, extended contact via literature, right? Yes. Um, which, which changes the, the, the metric. Um, but I do think, um, and there is a fair bit on like moral imagination for like Mm-Hmm. I want to be able to imagine myself doing X, right? So there's a lot of this on like, why don't girls want to be doctors or presidents or whatever, right? Like, well, because we never present them with an image of someone like them doing that. So, um, so yeah, I think it, I think it, um, for kids kinda shapes what they imagine is possible for Themselves Yes. For themselves. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Brilliant. Brynn, uh, massive, massive Thank you for coming out tonight. I've really enjoyed it. I'm, I'm quite sad this webinar's over, actually, I'm gonna to find a good excuse to contact you now Anytime I'm here and I saw a couple things with like, is it okay to email? Absolutely. Yes. Brilliant. I I, I Might quiz you about a book list as well 'cause I saw someone commenting about finding the books, so I might see if I can Yeah, we can work out way to get those books from. That'd be really good. So yeah, massive. Thank you for coming outside and a big thank you to everyone for spending the evening with us as well. Um, it's been really good and really important I think too. So I think there's been some really good messages for everyone to take away tonight, so thank you. But yeah, is there anything you'd like to leave us with tonight, Brin? No, I just, I love yeah. Any, anytime I can talk kids books, I'll talk kids books. Brilliant. That's, that's fantastic. And we're all fans of story here, so everyone here is fans of story, but yeah. Brilliant. Thank you. Thank you, Brynn. Thank you so.