Black Kids, Outside

Turns out, very few children’s books are about Black kids, playing, exploring, adventuring or existing, outside. Michelle Martin, the Beverly Cleary Endowed Professor for Children and Youth Services at the University of Washington’s Information School, and a children’s-book critic, has managed to locate only a handful of picture books that have Black kids exploring the world outside. She counts The Snowy Day, the Ezra Jack Keats classic from 1962, among that group, as well as Where’s Rodney?, published in 2017, and Hiking Day and We Are Brothers, both published in 2018, and not too many others. (We’d say The Paper Boy, by Dav Pilkey, might count here, as well?).

Read more at the Atlantic.