The Age of Inclusiveness: Everything I love and Loathe About Today's Children Books

Verse: Proverbs 22:6 Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it.

This year I had the privilege of publishing my very first children's book, "The Abc's of Culture", now available online via Barnes and Nobles, Walmart, Lulu and Amazon! I was inspired from my years of teaching to create something beneficial for not only my own students but students everywhere! Some books take their tone from the social and political climate of it's time. For me and many others, we're living in a time where we have either a very constricted or not quite concrete view of "culture." With the ways in which it has been portrayed in media, and illustrated by the public, I began to worry that children would grow up in a world not being able to safely identity their own personal cultures without being conflicted about what it actually is. I began The Abc's of Culture as a poem for my students during our multi-cultural week lessons, which later inspired the book. I wanted to be able to provide a child-friendly, age appropriate book that explains culture at it's root elements and to do that, I made my way to the nearest dictionary and provided a definition of the term on the back of my next project. Children gain understanding through experience and exposure. While writing my book, I researched into newly published works for children and was both delighted and mortified at what I found. Listed below are three things I both love and loathe about today's children's books:

Love

• An increased number of black children's authors have provided a means of making our children feel seen and acknowledged, if it is one thing that the black community of children desperately needed was an opportunity to see other children like themselves interacting and exploring the world in ways that have already been normalized for everyone else. Representation for ALL children is of great importance.

• Inclusiveness of children with special needs and underlying conditions have helped fight years of negative stigmas as it pertains to their growth and well-being. Beautiful, bright picture books featuring children with autism, ADHD, Diabetes, those who deal with blindness, those who are wheel chair bound and more, adorn the shelves in impressive numbers that make me very happy inside. :)

• The love for literature in classrooms and homes is making a come-back, just when I thought books would be outmoded and computers would take over (that isn't a joke, I actually thought that!) With the rise of literature that children can relate to comes new found interest and with interest, books shall live and prosper on. :)

Loathe

• Books that discuss sexual orientation should not be targeted to children. PERIOD. I have seen some wildly inappropriate content that should have never been allowed to be in a child's hands and I know many people will disagree with me when I say that the publication of explicit information to young children is NOT progressive, it IS disgusting.

• Awkward reads that leave me baffled and a bit unsettled. Books that express boundaries and those that basically teach children how to socially conduct themselves is all well and good, depending on how it is presented....There are some tasteless titles out there that can be fairly misleading and it doesn't encourage me to read them, more so than burn them and rinse my eyes with holy water.

• Again, the idea of progressive movement has been greatly mistaken. I feel as if there are topics that are too mature for a child to grasp and understand. The whole point of children's books is to allow them to explore literature at their current development stages, and allow them a creative space that is geared to their age. A child's sexual orientation should not even be a thing and if you ask why, you are apart of the problem.

Let's discuss, how do you all feel about today's children's books? Comment below and remember...

"For the love of life and literature, stay prayerful, stay positive and write on."