Multicultural Childrens Literature Essay

The History and Role of Multicultural Children’s Literature Many authors throughout time, have written different types of multicultural children’s books, such as, mystery, dramatic, funny, etc. Every story contains different life lessons or ideals whether it’s about how to not bully others or just about how some characters in the book just go for a picnic in a park. Each story is capable of teaching children aspects about life and use these stories as guidelines as they reach maturity. However, each story can influence negative and positive ideas about different cultures, ethnicities, stereotypes, gender, and equality. This can gravely impact children behavior towards themselves, neighbors or other individuals. If they are exposed to “good” children’s literature, not containing stereotypes, and inequality, this can gravely impact how young children will be able to treat others with respect and equality. Early multicultural books in the 1900’s did contain immense amount of stereotypes because of different discrimination and racism that was occurring during those time periods. …show more content…
In fact, “good” multicultural children’s literature can help the next generation of children to think more critically about equality and social justice. According to the Reader, “Authentic children’s that include a variety of cultures can help future generations view people in different parts of the world or even those in their own neighborhood, as equal members of society.” (Causarano, 2012, p.3). This supports the idea that children’s authors should be encourage to eliminate as much discrimination, stereotypes, sexism, gender inequality as possible in order to children can grasp the ideal of equality and respect for everyone, thus eliminating future bullying and harassment to