CCBC-Net Archives
Re: Reading Diversity Analysis
- Contemporary messages sorted: [ by date ] [ by subject ] [ by author ]
From: Colleen Kelley <cakelley_at_ix.netcom.com>
Date: Thu, 28 Feb 2013 13:18:18 -0600 (GMT-06:00)
body{font-family: Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:9pt;ba ckground-color: #ffffff;color: black;}
body{font-family: Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:9pt;ba ckground-color: #ffffff;color: black;}
body{font-family: Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:9pt;ba ckground-color: #ffffff;color: black;}
body{font-family: Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:9pt;ba ckground-color: #ffffff;color: black;}
Charles, I realize that I may be rushing in "where angels fear to tread", since I am relatively new to this list. Please excuse me if these comments are not within the realm of this discussion, or if I have misunderstood your writi ng. I appreciate all the effort and thought you have put into your analyses and discussions about multicultural issues with regard to children's litera ture. However, I am a bit confused by your analysis of your favorite childh ood books. You are a white male. Mike Mulligan is a white male, as are Sherlock Holmes, Thor Heyerdahl, William Flinders Petrie, and Santa Claus. The Ingalls family is white, as are the majority of the people in the Littl e House series. Pippi Longstocking is also white, although she is a girl.&n bsp;The Little Engine That Could is not a person, and neither is Jonathan L ivingston Seagull, though I do not consider this, nor The Teachings of Don Juan, to be children's books. The only protagonist among these books who would not look white, if there
were pictures in the book and if it were a children's book, would be Don Juan. To me, color is the most obvious difference between people. Sometimes we can't tell right away from appearances if someone is a boy or girl, but di fferences of color and other physical characteristics, such as eye shape, a re pretty obvious. Since I am a white female, I would be interested in know ing the childhood reading experiences of people on this list who think of t hemselves as people of color. I have tried to imagine how I would feel if all the white people in the books you listed were brown or black. Or, looking at the books featured at Through the Magic Door, I have tried to imagine how I would feel if al l the white protagonists in those books were black or brown (which is the m ajority, except for the animals). I realize that economics and proportional representation of the population are factors that must be considered when we talk about book publication, but they don't negate the feelings of those young reader s who are trying to understand their place in the world.
I have traveled quite a bit in different countries, and in one of them I was the only white person I saw. But I was a person of authority and a guest in that instance, and I was among people with whom I was acquainte d. On a flight back to the US from Malaysia, I once found myself on a plane with a stop in Taiwan. I was the only "round eye" on the entire plane , and I found it to be an interesting feeling--especially since everyone el se was speaking Chinese. I do not speak Chinese. I also remember some friends suggesting we attend Mass at a bl ack church one Christmas. The biggest topic of conversation after that visit was that the statue of the baby Jesus was black. I'm sure Mary and J oseph were black as well, but somehow it is the figure of Jesus t hat was the focus. To me, this was a very powerful symbol of identification and a role model. I have rarely seen a picture of Jesus as his skin color would actually have been in the land where he was born. I watched a woman win Top Chef and
$125,000 last night. The first thing she wants to do with the money she won is to take a trip to Korea. Why ? She wants to see at least two other people who look like her, a nd to see where she comes from. She was born in Korea, but was adopted at f our months by a family in a small town in Michigan. She loves this family, and is happy with them. She just wants to meet some other people who look l ike her. I think statistics and data analyses are often useful, but sometimes the most powerful data is gleaned from sharing personal experiences. I would l ove to hear more about these from anyone on this list. Colleen Kelley
-----Original Message----- From: Charles Bayless
Sent: Feb 27, 2013 9:23 AM To: ccbc-net_at_lists.wisc.edu S ubject:
Reading Diversity Analysis X
http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40 NS "http://www.w3.org/T
="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:vml" xmlns:o="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:off ice:office" xmlns:w="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:word" xmlns:m="ht
="text/html;
/* Font Definitions */ _at_font-face {font-family:"Cambria Math"; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4;} @font-face {font-family:Calibri; panose-1:2 15 5 2 2 2 4 3 2 4;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";} a:ZZZlink, span.MsoHyperlink {mso-style-priority:99; color:blue; text-decoration:underline;} a:visited, span.MsoHyperlinkFollowed {mso-style-priority:99; color:purple; text-decoration:underline;} p.MsoListParagraph, li.MsoListParagraph, div.MsoListParagraph {mso-style-priority:34; margin-top:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:.5in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";} span.EmailStyle18 {mso-style-type:personal-compose; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; color:windowtext;} .MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; font-size:10.0pt;} @page WordSection1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.0in 1.0in 1.0in;} div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1
;}
I keep asking for evidence regarding the measured prev alence of diversity and conformity match (where critical identity variables match between the reader, the author and the protagonist) in childrenв Ђ™s literature and whether there is any measurable impact from presence or absence of conformity literature. I can’t answer the seco nd question but I decided to take a back-of-the-envelope crack at the first . In doing so, I find that there are actually two elements to the que stion – 1) to what extent are readers willing to read beyond their own culture and key attributes and 2) to what extent are Group X members un - or underrepresented in children’s literature. We often spea k of diversity and multiculturalism as if they are synonymous with Group X underrepresentation. It appears that they are not synonymous.
I took about four hours to do a quick and dirty measur ement of conformity literature, multiculturalism, and diversity to try and wrap some numbers around an ill-defined topic. What specifically does it mean when we call for greater diversity, more multiculturalism, and mor e individuals with whom children can identify in children’s literat ure? I preface this exercise with the firm disclaimer that these are all good faith but necessarily ballpark numbers.
Just the exercise of figuring out what to measure and how, was illuminating and clarifying. I have defined diversity as rea ding about people who do not share your primary Group traits. I have defined multiculturalism as reading about protagonists who do not share you r own culture. My conclusion from the exercise is that 1) childrenв Ђ™s literature is already incredibly diverse so trying to increase dive rsity is probably not going to make much difference, 2) children’s literature already has a high degree of multiculturalism ranging from 35% ( by author) to 60% (by protagonist) so further efforts in this arena are als o likely not to make much difference, and 3) despite the existing diversity and multiculturalism, the odds of a particular child, recognizing themselv es in the identity of authors and protagonists is low to start with and bec omes exponentially lower, the more attributes you add to the Group X defini tion. Finally, 4) the economics of small numbers wreaks ye t further h avoc upon compound Group X factors. If you are a YA GLBT Native Ameri can, the very rough estimate of market size would look something like:  ; 5 Million Native Americans X 1.5% (rough percentage of GLBT population) X 44% (Number of households with children) X 50% (percentage of the populati on who read recreationally) X 10% (chance of a person buying a particular b ook in which they are interested – made this number up and assigned a high side value, all the other numbers are sourced) approximately 1, 650 book sales if everyone who is a likely and interested reader with attri butes in the target population buys a copy. Obviously that is just an order of magnitude estimate and there will be sales beyond the YA NA GLBT population but it does give a sense of the financial risk involved. W ith that small a market, there is no room for errors in cost.
With my self-imposed limit of 4 hours, I was not able to look at the top 100 books published in 2012 and do this analysis. Instead, what I did was two-fold.
First I looked at ten books to which I was emotionally attached as a child/YA or which materially changed a point of view that I had. In other words, books that were in some way significant and with which I connected. The books were Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel , The Little Engine That Could, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, The Teachings of Don Juan, Kon-Tiki, Little House on the Prairie, Pippi Longstocking, She rlock Holmes, William Flinders Petrie (I had a long standing fascination wi th Egyptology), and A Night Before Christmas illustrated poem. I look ed at each of these ten and assessed my personal degree of conformity on th ree attributes and in regard to two variables. Specifically, did my R ace, Culture and Gender (RCG attributes) match that of either Protagonists or Authors (the variables)? If these were important books in my child hood then one might expect, if conformity is a real and important issue, th at I would have a high conformity measure (with Protagonist a nd Author) for these important books. In fact, my RCG did not match that of any of the protagonists and only two of the authors, indicating that conformity ha s only a limited predictive power in terms of which books are going to be r elevant/important to a child (with the caveat of course that this is based on a sample of one).
Taking a slightly different perspective, I looked at t he RCG of the ten protagonists and asked what degree of overlap there was w ith my own RCG? Example: if the sample consisted of ten books o f German literature by women authors, I would have an Authorial RCG overlap of 33% (10 white race, 0 from same culture and 0 from same gender, 10/30 33%). My Protagonist RCG overlap for the actual ten books was 40% and my Authorial RCG was 63%. So for these ten critical books, the s cores were
RCG Protagonist Match – 0% RCG Protagonist Overlap – 40% RCG Author Match – 20% RCG Author Overlap – 63% Total Author and Protagonist conformity – 0%
Obviously this is subject to criticism but it at least begins to put some boundaries around pure speculation. Ideally what you would do is to look at more variables than just RCG. In terms of identity, likely ones ought to include Class, Religion, Familial Status, an d Orientation with plenty of other candidates (Health/Morbidity, Income Qui ntile, etc.). You would look at a much larger population of books (in the hundreds). You would look at the current population of books bei ng read by children (not necessarily the same as those being published).&nb sp; You would use standard definitions to provide rigor. You would in clude not only protagonists but all characters within the book with whom ch ildren might identify.
This sort of analysis was way beyond the 4 hour constr aint. I took an alternative approach. I maintain a database of some 20,000 titles selected by durability and popularity as determined by f requency of awards received, mentions on library lists, mentions by the rea ding public, etc. It is not super rigorous but it is pretty good.&nbs p; You would recognize all the books (examples among the top titles: Charlo tte's Web, Where the Wild Things Are, Goodnight Moon, Mr. Popper's Penquins , Curious George, A Wrinkle in Time, Madeline, Make Way For Ducklings, The Secret Garden, The Little House). I took this list and rank sorted by greatest popularity and then selected the top 100 books that I recognized from my childhood from among those most popular. By using books from my own childhood, I was able to identify the RCG elements without any resea rch, i.e. quickly. By using books from my childhood I bias the sample by those childhood circumstances (American but raised abroad in several di fferent countries where books were often less than readily available).  ; I also bias the sample by age, i.e. no contemporary books. All that said, it still moves things forward beyond simply speculating.
Another drawback of this database is that, by tracking popularity, it is overwhelmingly fiction and tends to omit non-fiction boo ks which for many children constitute a material percentage of their readin g. Probably 60% of my childhood reading was non-fiction and some of t he influential books that are also popular (such as A Night to Remember by Walter Lord; The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman; Tutankhamun by Desroche s Noblecourt; Gods, Graves, and Scholars by C.W. Ceram, etc.) simply donв Ђ™t lend themselves to RCG classification.
The importance of definitions became critically clear when conducting this RCG analysis on 100 books instead of ten. What d o you do when there are multiple authors? How do you assign RCG to fa ntasy characters (What gender is the Velveteen Rabbit? What culture is the Little Engine? ) How do you assign authorial culture to authors who w ere born and raised in one country but later migrated and took citizenship in another? Is there a time limit on culture (i.e. Is it accura te to say that you share the same culture with an author from your own coun try but who was writing in the 1860s? Heck, are children of today of the sa me culture as 1950?) How do you deal with identity definitions (shoul d Sydney Taylor be considered the same culture because she is American or a different culture because she is writing within the Jewish tradition/exper ience? Is Anne of Green Gables a different culture because it is Cana dian or the same because it is North American?) And so
on. And that is only for three simple variables of Race, Culture and Gender. I made the best judgments possible within the 4 hours.
The results then from this RCG analysis of Protagonist and Author for the top 100 American children’s book with which I w as personally familiar are:
RCG Protagonist Match – 18% RCG Protagonist Overlap – 50% RCG Author Match – 32% RCG Author Overlap – 73% Total Author and Protagonist conformity – 15%
So for a sample of 100 books of the roughly 800-1000 t hat I read as a child, I had conformity alignment (complete shared RCG attr ibutes with both author and protagonist) with 15%. Material, but not convincingly demonstrative that that is a critical issue in reading. So for an average child then, that implies that they are likely to see them selves in the author AND protagonist attributes only 15% of the time.
Even if the conformity index is very low, what about d iversity and multiculturalism? Since I am in the second largest demog raphic group (White, American Culture, Male), and assuming that the largest group’s numbers (W,AC,F) are comparable, what this indicates is th at there is a very high degree of diversity and multiculturalism already.&n bsp; In other words, if you are not from the numerically dominant group, yo ur alignment numbers will inherently be even lower, i.e. even more diverse. Some specific numbers for those 100 books:
Authorship Race: 99% white, 1% other
Authorship Culture: 67% American, 33% other
Authorship Gender: 54% male, 46% female
Protagonist Race: 59% white, 41% multiple other
Protagonist Culture: 39% American, 61% other
Protagonist Gender: 53% male, 47% female
The authorship race stands out and is reflective of bo oks written more than forty years ago. I suspect that the authorial r ace diversity would be far higher today, particularly if you look at number of titles published rather than just the number of books sold. In fa ct, I suspect that all the diversity and multicultural numbers would be hig her today (but leave that for someone else to calculate).
So if kids are already reading highly diverse and mult icultural books in terms of authors and protagonists, and the reading portf olio is already getting more diverse and multicultural, what benefit will b e derived from adding another few percentage points? I think what thi s indicates is that multiculturalism and diversity are not the real issues. Children are willing, and able, and actually do read books about cha racters who are not like them and by authors who are not like them.
What the analysis also indicates is that even in an en vironment of high multiculturalism and diversity, you can still have readin g individuals who fail to see themselves reflected in the body of books ava ilable. If I am one of the 1.5% of Americans with a Native American b ackground (or 1.5% GLBT, or 6% Jewish, or 20% bottom quintile income, or 13 % African-American, etc.), I am unlikely to find all that many conforming a uthors and protagonists among the broad portfolio of books that others are reading. If the conformity isn’t there for the majority group , it will be even more dramatically absent for smaller groups.
So the push by some to encourage authors to keep in mi nd the rich diversity of the US when they people the characters in their bo oks makes sense but probably doesn’t get us very far.
If the reading public is already open and accustomed t o non-conforming, multicultural, diverse reading AND there is effectively a near limitless supply of new titles AND there are low barriers to writing and publishing for small markets AND there is high publishing risk (evidenc ed by a high failure rate among new books with low sales and no profit), th en the solution to increasing the opportunity where people can see themselv es based on whichever attributes are most pertinent at the time, seems to r eside in getting people in that Group X to read more and buy more of these books. Simply producing more won’t solve the problem unless t here is demand and unless there is a means of connecting that demand to the supply. And I recognize that this approach also has all sorts of iss ues (who belongs to Group X, is their depiction authentic, what to do when the representation is statistically accurate but might fuel a negative ster eotype, etc.) People are willing, able and do read books that are bot h diverse and multicultural. In an increasingly heterogeneous populat ion with multiple attributes by which to identify a Group as X, and where G roup X may be a compound definition of attributes, the potential market of Group X can quickly become too small for commercial purposes with too littl e prospect for upside potential. Under these circumstances, I keep co ming back to the five actions that I think are at the heart of this issue ( regardless of which Group X is the focus).
1) Increase demand for books in general and the habit of reading in particular within their constituency (as well as at la rge) 2) Increase quality of books (broadly defined b ut especially in terms of editorial review) 3) Increase the cultural and societal value att ached to enthusiastic reading 4) Improve or create better market making mecha nisms for matching supply with demand 5) Improve forecasting competency to improve th e yield of profitable books to the total number of published books
Jeffrey Brenzel (Dean of Undergraduate Admissions at Y ale University and philosopher) defines a classic as 1) Addresses universal and permanent human concerns, 2) Is a game-changer, 3) Influences other gr eat works, 4) Is respected by experts, and 5) Challenges as it rewards.&nbs p; In the absence of any standard definition, that looks like one that most people might agree with most elements.
Accepting that, it does then pose an irony. The more you target smaller groups, the less able you are to meet those five re quirements of a classic and therefore the less likely you are to have a win ner that bursts the boundaries of group definitions.
I think we have heard several comments or observations in this discussion to the effect that we ought to be seeking the universal within the framework of the particular; that that is the only way to get t he numbers and the broader popularity that would allow a sustainable succes s. That does seem to be the only way: to cut the Gordian Knot of limi ted demand arising from particularity with the sword of universalism.
Charles
Date: Thu, 28 Feb 2013 13:18:18 -0600 (GMT-06:00)
body{font-family: Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:9pt;ba ckground-color: #ffffff;color: black;}
body{font-family: Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:9pt;ba ckground-color: #ffffff;color: black;}
body{font-family: Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:9pt;ba ckground-color: #ffffff;color: black;}
body{font-family: Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:9pt;ba ckground-color: #ffffff;color: black;}
Charles, I realize that I may be rushing in "where angels fear to tread", since I am relatively new to this list. Please excuse me if these comments are not within the realm of this discussion, or if I have misunderstood your writi ng. I appreciate all the effort and thought you have put into your analyses and discussions about multicultural issues with regard to children's litera ture. However, I am a bit confused by your analysis of your favorite childh ood books. You are a white male. Mike Mulligan is a white male, as are Sherlock Holmes, Thor Heyerdahl, William Flinders Petrie, and Santa Claus. The Ingalls family is white, as are the majority of the people in the Littl e House series. Pippi Longstocking is also white, although she is a girl.&n bsp;The Little Engine That Could is not a person, and neither is Jonathan L ivingston Seagull, though I do not consider this, nor The Teachings of Don Juan, to be children's books. The only protagonist among these books who would not look white, if there
were pictures in the book and if it were a children's book, would be Don Juan. To me, color is the most obvious difference between people. Sometimes we can't tell right away from appearances if someone is a boy or girl, but di fferences of color and other physical characteristics, such as eye shape, a re pretty obvious. Since I am a white female, I would be interested in know ing the childhood reading experiences of people on this list who think of t hemselves as people of color. I have tried to imagine how I would feel if all the white people in the books you listed were brown or black. Or, looking at the books featured at Through the Magic Door, I have tried to imagine how I would feel if al l the white protagonists in those books were black or brown (which is the m ajority, except for the animals). I realize that economics and proportional representation of the population are factors that must be considered when we talk about book publication, but they don't negate the feelings of those young reader s who are trying to understand their place in the world.
I have traveled quite a bit in different countries, and in one of them I was the only white person I saw. But I was a person of authority and a guest in that instance, and I was among people with whom I was acquainte d. On a flight back to the US from Malaysia, I once found myself on a plane with a stop in Taiwan. I was the only "round eye" on the entire plane , and I found it to be an interesting feeling--especially since everyone el se was speaking Chinese. I do not speak Chinese. I also remember some friends suggesting we attend Mass at a bl ack church one Christmas. The biggest topic of conversation after that visit was that the statue of the baby Jesus was black. I'm sure Mary and J oseph were black as well, but somehow it is the figure of Jesus t hat was the focus. To me, this was a very powerful symbol of identification and a role model. I have rarely seen a picture of Jesus as his skin color would actually have been in the land where he was born. I watched a woman win Top Chef and
$125,000 last night. The first thing she wants to do with the money she won is to take a trip to Korea. Why ? She wants to see at least two other people who look like her, a nd to see where she comes from. She was born in Korea, but was adopted at f our months by a family in a small town in Michigan. She loves this family, and is happy with them. She just wants to meet some other people who look l ike her. I think statistics and data analyses are often useful, but sometimes the most powerful data is gleaned from sharing personal experiences. I would l ove to hear more about these from anyone on this list. Colleen Kelley
-----Original Message----- From: Charles Bayless
Sent: Feb 27, 2013 9:23 AM To: ccbc-net_at_lists.wisc.edu S ubject:
Reading Diversity Analysis X
http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40 NS "http://www.w3.org/T
="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:vml" xmlns:o="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:off ice:office" xmlns:w="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:word" xmlns:m="ht
="text/html;
/* Font Definitions */ _at_font-face {font-family:"Cambria Math"; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4;} @font-face {font-family:Calibri; panose-1:2 15 5 2 2 2 4 3 2 4;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";} a:ZZZlink, span.MsoHyperlink {mso-style-priority:99; color:blue; text-decoration:underline;} a:visited, span.MsoHyperlinkFollowed {mso-style-priority:99; color:purple; text-decoration:underline;} p.MsoListParagraph, li.MsoListParagraph, div.MsoListParagraph {mso-style-priority:34; margin-top:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:.5in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";} span.EmailStyle18 {mso-style-type:personal-compose; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; color:windowtext;} .MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; font-size:10.0pt;} @page WordSection1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.0in 1.0in 1.0in;} div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1
;}
I keep asking for evidence regarding the measured prev alence of diversity and conformity match (where critical identity variables match between the reader, the author and the protagonist) in childrenв Ђ™s literature and whether there is any measurable impact from presence or absence of conformity literature. I can’t answer the seco nd question but I decided to take a back-of-the-envelope crack at the first . In doing so, I find that there are actually two elements to the que stion – 1) to what extent are readers willing to read beyond their own culture and key attributes and 2) to what extent are Group X members un - or underrepresented in children’s literature. We often spea k of diversity and multiculturalism as if they are synonymous with Group X underrepresentation. It appears that they are not synonymous.
I took about four hours to do a quick and dirty measur ement of conformity literature, multiculturalism, and diversity to try and wrap some numbers around an ill-defined topic. What specifically does it mean when we call for greater diversity, more multiculturalism, and mor e individuals with whom children can identify in children’s literat ure? I preface this exercise with the firm disclaimer that these are all good faith but necessarily ballpark numbers.
Just the exercise of figuring out what to measure and how, was illuminating and clarifying. I have defined diversity as rea ding about people who do not share your primary Group traits. I have defined multiculturalism as reading about protagonists who do not share you r own culture. My conclusion from the exercise is that 1) childrenв Ђ™s literature is already incredibly diverse so trying to increase dive rsity is probably not going to make much difference, 2) children’s literature already has a high degree of multiculturalism ranging from 35% ( by author) to 60% (by protagonist) so further efforts in this arena are als o likely not to make much difference, and 3) despite the existing diversity and multiculturalism, the odds of a particular child, recognizing themselv es in the identity of authors and protagonists is low to start with and bec omes exponentially lower, the more attributes you add to the Group X defini tion. Finally, 4) the economics of small numbers wreaks ye t further h avoc upon compound Group X factors. If you are a YA GLBT Native Ameri can, the very rough estimate of market size would look something like:  ; 5 Million Native Americans X 1.5% (rough percentage of GLBT population) X 44% (Number of households with children) X 50% (percentage of the populati on who read recreationally) X 10% (chance of a person buying a particular b ook in which they are interested – made this number up and assigned a high side value, all the other numbers are sourced) approximately 1, 650 book sales if everyone who is a likely and interested reader with attri butes in the target population buys a copy. Obviously that is just an order of magnitude estimate and there will be sales beyond the YA NA GLBT population but it does give a sense of the financial risk involved. W ith that small a market, there is no room for errors in cost.
With my self-imposed limit of 4 hours, I was not able to look at the top 100 books published in 2012 and do this analysis. Instead, what I did was two-fold.
First I looked at ten books to which I was emotionally attached as a child/YA or which materially changed a point of view that I had. In other words, books that were in some way significant and with which I connected. The books were Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel , The Little Engine That Could, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, The Teachings of Don Juan, Kon-Tiki, Little House on the Prairie, Pippi Longstocking, She rlock Holmes, William Flinders Petrie (I had a long standing fascination wi th Egyptology), and A Night Before Christmas illustrated poem. I look ed at each of these ten and assessed my personal degree of conformity on th ree attributes and in regard to two variables. Specifically, did my R ace, Culture and Gender (RCG attributes) match that of either Protagonists or Authors (the variables)? If these were important books in my child hood then one might expect, if conformity is a real and important issue, th at I would have a high conformity measure (with Protagonist a nd Author) for these important books. In fact, my RCG did not match that of any of the protagonists and only two of the authors, indicating that conformity ha s only a limited predictive power in terms of which books are going to be r elevant/important to a child (with the caveat of course that this is based on a sample of one).
Taking a slightly different perspective, I looked at t he RCG of the ten protagonists and asked what degree of overlap there was w ith my own RCG? Example: if the sample consisted of ten books o f German literature by women authors, I would have an Authorial RCG overlap of 33% (10 white race, 0 from same culture and 0 from same gender, 10/30 33%). My Protagonist RCG overlap for the actual ten books was 40% and my Authorial RCG was 63%. So for these ten critical books, the s cores were
RCG Protagonist Match – 0% RCG Protagonist Overlap – 40% RCG Author Match – 20% RCG Author Overlap – 63% Total Author and Protagonist conformity – 0%
Obviously this is subject to criticism but it at least begins to put some boundaries around pure speculation. Ideally what you would do is to look at more variables than just RCG. In terms of identity, likely ones ought to include Class, Religion, Familial Status, an d Orientation with plenty of other candidates (Health/Morbidity, Income Qui ntile, etc.). You would look at a much larger population of books (in the hundreds). You would look at the current population of books bei ng read by children (not necessarily the same as those being published).&nb sp; You would use standard definitions to provide rigor. You would in clude not only protagonists but all characters within the book with whom ch ildren might identify.
This sort of analysis was way beyond the 4 hour constr aint. I took an alternative approach. I maintain a database of some 20,000 titles selected by durability and popularity as determined by f requency of awards received, mentions on library lists, mentions by the rea ding public, etc. It is not super rigorous but it is pretty good.&nbs p; You would recognize all the books (examples among the top titles: Charlo tte's Web, Where the Wild Things Are, Goodnight Moon, Mr. Popper's Penquins , Curious George, A Wrinkle in Time, Madeline, Make Way For Ducklings, The Secret Garden, The Little House). I took this list and rank sorted by greatest popularity and then selected the top 100 books that I recognized from my childhood from among those most popular. By using books from my own childhood, I was able to identify the RCG elements without any resea rch, i.e. quickly. By using books from my childhood I bias the sample by those childhood circumstances (American but raised abroad in several di fferent countries where books were often less than readily available).  ; I also bias the sample by age, i.e. no contemporary books. All that said, it still moves things forward beyond simply speculating.
Another drawback of this database is that, by tracking popularity, it is overwhelmingly fiction and tends to omit non-fiction boo ks which for many children constitute a material percentage of their readin g. Probably 60% of my childhood reading was non-fiction and some of t he influential books that are also popular (such as A Night to Remember by Walter Lord; The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman; Tutankhamun by Desroche s Noblecourt; Gods, Graves, and Scholars by C.W. Ceram, etc.) simply donв Ђ™t lend themselves to RCG classification.
The importance of definitions became critically clear when conducting this RCG analysis on 100 books instead of ten. What d o you do when there are multiple authors? How do you assign RCG to fa ntasy characters (What gender is the Velveteen Rabbit? What culture is the Little Engine? ) How do you assign authorial culture to authors who w ere born and raised in one country but later migrated and took citizenship in another? Is there a time limit on culture (i.e. Is it accura te to say that you share the same culture with an author from your own coun try but who was writing in the 1860s? Heck, are children of today of the sa me culture as 1950?) How do you deal with identity definitions (shoul d Sydney Taylor be considered the same culture because she is American or a different culture because she is writing within the Jewish tradition/exper ience? Is Anne of Green Gables a different culture because it is Cana dian or the same because it is North American?) And so
on. And that is only for three simple variables of Race, Culture and Gender. I made the best judgments possible within the 4 hours.
The results then from this RCG analysis of Protagonist and Author for the top 100 American children’s book with which I w as personally familiar are:
RCG Protagonist Match – 18% RCG Protagonist Overlap – 50% RCG Author Match – 32% RCG Author Overlap – 73% Total Author and Protagonist conformity – 15%
So for a sample of 100 books of the roughly 800-1000 t hat I read as a child, I had conformity alignment (complete shared RCG attr ibutes with both author and protagonist) with 15%. Material, but not convincingly demonstrative that that is a critical issue in reading. So for an average child then, that implies that they are likely to see them selves in the author AND protagonist attributes only 15% of the time.
Even if the conformity index is very low, what about d iversity and multiculturalism? Since I am in the second largest demog raphic group (White, American Culture, Male), and assuming that the largest group’s numbers (W,AC,F) are comparable, what this indicates is th at there is a very high degree of diversity and multiculturalism already.&n bsp; In other words, if you are not from the numerically dominant group, yo ur alignment numbers will inherently be even lower, i.e. even more diverse. Some specific numbers for those 100 books:
Authorship Race: 99% white, 1% other
Authorship Culture: 67% American, 33% other
Authorship Gender: 54% male, 46% female
Protagonist Race: 59% white, 41% multiple other
Protagonist Culture: 39% American, 61% other
Protagonist Gender: 53% male, 47% female
The authorship race stands out and is reflective of bo oks written more than forty years ago. I suspect that the authorial r ace diversity would be far higher today, particularly if you look at number of titles published rather than just the number of books sold. In fa ct, I suspect that all the diversity and multicultural numbers would be hig her today (but leave that for someone else to calculate).
So if kids are already reading highly diverse and mult icultural books in terms of authors and protagonists, and the reading portf olio is already getting more diverse and multicultural, what benefit will b e derived from adding another few percentage points? I think what thi s indicates is that multiculturalism and diversity are not the real issues. Children are willing, and able, and actually do read books about cha racters who are not like them and by authors who are not like them.
What the analysis also indicates is that even in an en vironment of high multiculturalism and diversity, you can still have readin g individuals who fail to see themselves reflected in the body of books ava ilable. If I am one of the 1.5% of Americans with a Native American b ackground (or 1.5% GLBT, or 6% Jewish, or 20% bottom quintile income, or 13 % African-American, etc.), I am unlikely to find all that many conforming a uthors and protagonists among the broad portfolio of books that others are reading. If the conformity isn’t there for the majority group , it will be even more dramatically absent for smaller groups.
So the push by some to encourage authors to keep in mi nd the rich diversity of the US when they people the characters in their bo oks makes sense but probably doesn’t get us very far.
If the reading public is already open and accustomed t o non-conforming, multicultural, diverse reading AND there is effectively a near limitless supply of new titles AND there are low barriers to writing and publishing for small markets AND there is high publishing risk (evidenc ed by a high failure rate among new books with low sales and no profit), th en the solution to increasing the opportunity where people can see themselv es based on whichever attributes are most pertinent at the time, seems to r eside in getting people in that Group X to read more and buy more of these books. Simply producing more won’t solve the problem unless t here is demand and unless there is a means of connecting that demand to the supply. And I recognize that this approach also has all sorts of iss ues (who belongs to Group X, is their depiction authentic, what to do when the representation is statistically accurate but might fuel a negative ster eotype, etc.) People are willing, able and do read books that are bot h diverse and multicultural. In an increasingly heterogeneous populat ion with multiple attributes by which to identify a Group as X, and where G roup X may be a compound definition of attributes, the potential market of Group X can quickly become too small for commercial purposes with too littl e prospect for upside potential. Under these circumstances, I keep co ming back to the five actions that I think are at the heart of this issue ( regardless of which Group X is the focus).
1) Increase demand for books in general and the habit of reading in particular within their constituency (as well as at la rge) 2) Increase quality of books (broadly defined b ut especially in terms of editorial review) 3) Increase the cultural and societal value att ached to enthusiastic reading 4) Improve or create better market making mecha nisms for matching supply with demand 5) Improve forecasting competency to improve th e yield of profitable books to the total number of published books
Jeffrey Brenzel (Dean of Undergraduate Admissions at Y ale University and philosopher) defines a classic as 1) Addresses universal and permanent human concerns, 2) Is a game-changer, 3) Influences other gr eat works, 4) Is respected by experts, and 5) Challenges as it rewards.&nbs p; In the absence of any standard definition, that looks like one that most people might agree with most elements.
Accepting that, it does then pose an irony. The more you target smaller groups, the less able you are to meet those five re quirements of a classic and therefore the less likely you are to have a win ner that bursts the boundaries of group definitions.
I think we have heard several comments or observations in this discussion to the effect that we ought to be seeking the universal within the framework of the particular; that that is the only way to get t he numbers and the broader popularity that would allow a sustainable succes s. That does seem to be the only way: to cut the Gordian Knot of limi ted demand arising from particularity with the sword of universalism.
Charles
---Received on Thu 28 Feb 2013 01:18:18 PM CST
