Some of you may be familiar with Diversity in YA (DiYA), a lovely project started last year by authors Cindy Pon and Malinda Lo to bring more attention to diversity in children’s literature. During the year-long DiYA project, Cindy and Malinda were kind enough to do a roundup each month of new titles coming out that featured diversity, and they defined diversity in the following way: (1) main characters or major secondary characters (e.g., a love interest or best friend kind of character) who are of color or are LGBT; or (2) written by a person of color or LGBT author.
Since DiYA is on hiatus, Cindy and Malinda gave us their blessing to continue their monthly roundup. We all felt that it was important to keep the spotlight on diverse books, and we hope you’ll join us in that mission!
Here’s our first roundup: diverse books out this February (if you’re on Pinterest, you can follow the booklist there):
Geeks, Girls and Secret Identities by Mike Jung
King of the Mound: My Summer With Satchel Paige by Wes Tooke
No Crystal Stair: A Documentary Novel of the Life and Work of Lewis Michaux, Harlem Bookseller by Vaunda Micheaux Nelson, illus. by R. Gregory Christie
The Knife and the Butterfly by Ashley Hope Pérez
Beneath a Meth Moon by Jacqueline Woodson
DJ Rising by Love Maia
The Miseducation of Cameron Post by Emily M. Danforth
Read ’em! Review ’em! Share the diversity love! Please let us know if we missed any books so we can add them, and keep a lookout for next month’s roundup.
**Additions, thanks to reader imput**
The Way We Fall by Megan Crewe
