Research in the Community Cont.

     After my research at the local bookstore and the local library, I was disappointed with the lack of diversity within the children's section at both locations. I decided to focus my media research (i.e. television and the internet) on diversity. For my internet search, I focused my attention on multicultural literature. I wanted to find websites that offered suggestions to parents and teachers who were interested in finding books about a specific culture. I found four websites that strive to show that diversity does exist in children's literature, you just need to know where to find it.
http://www.childrensliteraturenetwork.org/resource/readlist/readlist.php : This is an independent network site that offers people suggestions for books based on age, race, and culture.
http://www.multiculturalchildrenslit.com/ : This is a website that claims to celebrate diversity through children's books. It provides links to books based on culture and race. The links are separated based on how the topics are displayed (i.e. realistic, animals, etc.)
http://www2.scholastic.com/browse/index.jsp : This is the website of the well-known children's magazine. It offers suggestions for parents, teachers, and kids. The suggestions for books about culture and race are based on popularity.
http://www.thinkbutton.com/occupation_multicultural_books_children.htm : This website was the easiest to navigate and provides suggestions for books about specific culture (the suggestions are based on price).
    It was important for me to know that parents could find books based on their culture even if their local library or bookstore does not carry them.
    For my media research, I decided to focus my attention on television advertisements. I watched a network (TBS) I thought would be available and appealing to most people for 75 min. During those 75 min., I took note of the advertisements geared toward kids and their parents (i.e. toy commercials). Through my observations, I noticed that the majority of kids that appear in those commercials are Caucasian. A child of a racial minority may not believe he is able to get a toy because he is not of the race displayed in the commercial. I think what commercials could appear on the network was dependent on the owners of the network. Unfortunately, the owners of most the television networks are Caucasian men.
P.S. Listomania on Amazon is another good place to find suggestions for diversity in children's books.