{"id":18688,"date":"2016-06-17T08:00:43","date_gmt":"2016-06-17T12:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=18688"},"modified":"2016-06-17T08:00:43","modified_gmt":"2016-06-17T12:00:43","slug":"proof-of-the-importance-of-mirrors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=18688","title":{"rendered":"Proof of the Importance of Mirrors"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the past 10 days, three small encounters\u00a0offered unexpected moments that underscored\u00a0how powerful is people&#8217;s need to see themselves represented, especially\u00a0in mainstream culture.<br \/>\nLast week, our thoughtful, observant staffer, Sandy, pulled me aside and said, &#8220;You have to see this video! A\u00a0little girl with a prosthetic leg gets an American Girl doll with a prosthetic leg, and her reaction is so amazing, it made me think of your diversity posts, how vital it is for children to see themselves in books and toys and media.&#8221; Sandy told me that the parents had contacted American Girl and\u00a0explained what they were looking for. The company obligingly sent them a doll that looked like their daughter, down to her single leg. Then the parents sent the doll to a prosthetics lab, which outfitted it with a snazzy prosthetic accented in hot pink, their child&#8217;s favorite color. American Girl even sent a sweet letter to the child, explaining the doll&#8217;s happy, well-cared-for journey.<!--more--><br \/>\nWhen the little girl opens the box with the doll, her reaction says everything you ever need to know about a child&#8217;s need to be represented in the world. It brings tears to our eyes not only in appreciation of her joy, but also, I think, in sudden, sorrowful recognition of far we have to go in creating a truly diverse, embracing world, in recognizing how many children don&#8217;t get this opportunity to encounter\u00a0themselves as seen, valued, and treasured.<br \/>\n<iframe src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ww3-VVRz9pE\" width=\"448\" height=\"252\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><br \/>\nThis little girl&#8217;s family was so wonderfully lucky to have the opportunity \u2014and frankly, the resources\u00a0and the sense of possibility, the access to the creativity afforded by\u00a0privilege \u2014\u00a0to give their daughter this incredible gift. I want so much for children without these opportunities to get special dolls that look like them, to read books featuring children who look like them having grand, joyful adventures. How do we make that happen? Surely, there&#8217;s a foundation that might take on this project.<br \/>\nI think it&#8217;s hard for members of any\u00a0dominant culture &#8212; white, Christian, straight, male, whatever the case in a\u00a0particular milieu &#8212; to understand\u00a0the soul-level thirst to be seen and valued.<br \/>\nJust a few days ago, I had a moment that gave me the teeniest hint of what it must feel like to be represented in a context in which\u00a0you aren&#8217;t used to seeing yourself. (I repeat that it was the teeniest hint. As a person\u00a0who grew up with opportunity and relatively reliable privilege, not to mention being a\u00a0Caucasian\u00a0person who has been incredibly frustrated\u00a0with, but by birth always been\u00a0part of, the\u00a0dominant culture, I have felt outsiderness in only a handful of\u00a0small, mostly unimportant ways \u2014\u00a0with the exception of sexism \u2014\u00a0over the years. Anyhow.) Last week, I began reading a YA fantasy ARC and very early on encountered a moment when one of the main characters, a\u00a0princess betrothed to a prince in a neighboring country, meets the prince&#8217;s sister, and they seem to have a moment of connection that foreshadows romance. The absolute arrow of joy and surprise and hope that leapt into my heart at this departure from the usual fantasy script startled me. I hadn&#8217;t realized how accustomed\u00a0I am\u00a0to being invisible in fantasy stories, how unwritten is my own story, how vast the heaps of accumulated books in which princess finds happiness with prince. It&#8217;s so ubiquitous I didn&#8217;t even think to question it until I came across an outlier book. I\u00a0had\u00a0a visceral, emotional, deeply grateful response to\u00a0encountering a fantasy script that for once included me. (And yes, I am now definitely going to read Malinda Lo&#8217;s <em>Ash <\/em>and<em> Huntress.<\/em>)<br \/>\nIf that was my own reaction, from my vantage point decades past the kind of identity vulnerability kids and teens deal with,\u00a0I can imagine the depth of a struggling\u00a0young person&#8217;s response to encountering herself or himself as the hero \u2014\u00a0not the quirky sidekick, not the outcast, but the center of action and hope and importance\u00a0\u2014\u00a0in the pages of a book.<br \/>\nSpeaking of visceral responses, our final\u00a0anecdote comes from my Turkish friend, Sara, who has a four-year-old biracial granddaughter. Little Corey\u00a0has\u00a0lots of books in her life, but when Sara gave Corey\u00a0<em>Amazing Grace<\/em> by Mary Hoffman, she was astonished by the difference in Corey&#8217;s reaction to the book. &#8220;She was mesmerized,&#8221; Sarah said. &#8220;She pulled herself up straight, leaned in, couldn&#8217;t get enough of looking at the pictures of this little girl who looked like her. She loves picture books, but even her body language was different with this one.&#8221; Sara said that her sons, darker-skinned than their classmates, had been\u00a0the same way. As young children, they couldn&#8217;t get enough of books by\u00a0Ezra Jack Keats. &#8220;It was just a different experience for them,&#8221; said Sara.<br \/>\n<div style=\"width: 512px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.indiebound.org\/book\/9780803710405\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.quartoknows.com\/quartokids\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/2015\/08\/grace-int-3.jpg\" width=\"502\" height=\"315\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Image from Amazing Grace by Mary Hoffman (25th anniversary edition)<\/p><\/div><br \/>\nIt&#8217;s not earth-shattering news that children, unused to seeing themselves represented in the mainstream media, react in a strongly positive way to exceptions. But all it takes is one first-hand\u00a0encounter with that fulfilled need to realize how responsible we all are for meeting it, how vital\u00a0it is to show all children that\u00a0their stories, their hearts and souls and bodies and minds, their flawed and perfect selves, matter in this world.<br \/>\nDo you have a story or anecdote to share about someone in your life encountering him- or herself in a book for the first time? We&#8217;d love to hear it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The importance of inclusive diversity, in three recent anecdotes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18688","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18688","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18688"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18688\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}