A former librarian friend of mine used to ensure that their
school library’s shelves carried multicultural books.
Unfortunately, she found that very few students in her
predominantly white school checked them out. Now that the school
has become more culturally diverse, the multicultural books
apparently have become more popular. I wondered a lot about her
observation while researching the amount of diversity which
could be found in children’s literature for a recent graduate
course. And I thought a lot about it while rereading Let the
Circle Be Unbroken by Mildred Taylor, because it’s clearly about
a life very different from my European American one. When I
first encountered Let the Circle Be Unbroken as a teenager, I
didn’t hate it; I just didn’t connect with it. Connection is a
critical word here. It’s one of the major reasons I cited in my
research paper for why, in our increasingly globalized world,
educators should introduce students to diverse literature. To my
shame, in my seven years as a teacher, I’v