What’s on your reading list for 2015?
Any books featuring diverse characters?
Julie M. Fiedler recently contacted me about the Frances Lincoln Diverse Voices Children’s Book Award and prepared a fabulous presentation on the award, which is for diversity in children’s fiction, and was won by Takeshita Demons in 2009.
Diverse books to read in 2015
In her presentation, Julie recommended a number of books featuring diverse characters for use in the classroom, and I’m adding them to my To Read list for 2015: 
- Esperanza Rising – by Pam Muñoz Ryan
- Bud, Not Buddy – by Christopher Paul Curtis
- Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes – by Eleanor Coerr
- I Never Saw Another Butterfly – a collection by Jewish children who lived in the concentration camp Theresienstadt
And I recommended one of my all-time favourite books:
Take The Long Path – by Joan de Hamel
This is the book my Kiwi grandfather gifted to my youngest sister, just weeks before he passed away, so it’s special in our family as well as being an incredible book: a thrilling adventure story about belonging and heritage.
It has everything I think a great children’s book should have and I’ve just bought myself a copy for my birthday.
I can’t wait to read it again! Have you read it? It can be tough to find a copy, so good luck (or you can ask to borrow mine :-))
Download Julie’s presentation on the Frances Lincoln Diverse Voices Children’s Book Award
Cristy Burne - AUTHOR AND STEM CREATIVE 
January 7, 2015 at 10:16 am
Hi Cristy… thanks for sharing the list. It’s always hard to find children’s books featuring different cultures, written in English. While your poster on diversity refers to American cultural groups, the same sort of statistics can be seen here in Australia, with few books sharing indigenous heritage, not to mention the wide range of immigrant cultures. As someone of British background, however, I feel that it is not my place to write fiction that draws on cultures which I don’t properly understand, and I know that it would be insulting to indigenous people, in particular, if I did. How great would it be if we could encourage writers from all different cultures to share their stories (as appropriate) and find ways for those stories to reach a wide audience, or simply infuse their culture into mainstream fiction? Thanks again for your list.
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