People Of Color Accounted For 22 Percent Of Children’s Books Characters In 2016

Two decades ago only about 9 percent of children’s books published in the U.S. were about people of color. Things have changed since then, but not by much. On Wednesday, the Cooperative Children’s Book Center at the University of Wisconsin, Madison’s Education School revealed that in 2016, it counted 427 books written or illustrated by people of color, and 736 books about people of color out of about 3,400 books it analyzed. That adds up to 22 percent of children’s books.