A new service, launched today by a queer mom and activist, offers subscribers a quarterly, curated selection of children’s books, chosen to include characters who are LGBTQ+, feminist, of various races and ethnicities, and of other under-represented identities. In doing so, it also hopes to show publishers there’s an ongoing market for such stories.
Alli Harper created OurShelves after noticing the dearth of high-quality, diverse books that would help her young daughter see people both like and unlike herself. “Who our children see in their books matters,” she writes on the OurShelves blog. “It matters a whole lot. Research is clear that by the ages of four (and likely earlier), children have unconsciously internalized cultural biases around identity—their own identity and that of others.”
She asserts, however, “It need not be this way,” and asks us to imagine, “What if we transformed our book shelves from being a tool that reinforces the inequities of the status quo to becoming a tool that affirms, models, cultivates and connects our children to the diverse, inclusive worldview that we envision for them?”
Unlike Flamingo Rampant, the micro-press that also offers diverse, LGBTQ-inclusive children’s books via a subscription model, OurShelves is not itself a publisher. Instead, their “Super Star Curation Team,” selects books from other publishers based on content and quality. The four women on the curation team have backgrounds in children’s literature, librarianship, academia, and early childhood education, and also bring their own varied queer and racial identities and experiences to bear. Three of the four are parents themselves. Whenever possible, they seek to include #ownvoices stories—ones in which the characters are created by authors of the same identity(-ies)—but note that there are still too few for every book in the box to be an #ownvoices story.
OurShelves lets subscribers choose the age range of books they would like to receive (0-2 years; 2-5 years; 5-7 years), and the number of books they want in each box (one, three, or five). Families with children of varied ages may subscribe to more than one box for an additional 1o percent off the additional boxes, alternate boxes, or combine content from each applicable age range into each box. And while not every book will have the same mix of identities, Harper tells me, “LGBTQ characters are guaranteed to appear in each box that includes more than one book. One-book boxes will rotate identities.”
A big part of OurShelves’ mission, too, is to use the consumer power of their subscribers to show existing publishers that there is a demand for inclusive, diverse books, and to solicit feedback on what stories are still needed. “We don’t just seek a token book every once and awhile. Rather, we envision a world where publishers publish, diverse authors and illustrators create, bookstores sell, and library, classroom, and home shelves offer a sustained and abundant outpouring of children’s books that actually reflect the incredible and beautiful diversity of our nation and world,” Harper writes.
That might be a challenge, but challenges aren’t new to Harper, a lawyer by training who served as president of the board of directors of the ACLU of Maryland during that state’s fight for marriage equality, and has also served on the boards of the ACLU in Pennsylvania and Maine.
I’ve been pleased to see that the number of LGBTQ (and otherwise diverse) children’s books does seem to be ticking slowly upwards, especially over the past year. The need for LGBTQ advocates and publishers to work together towards this goal is also highlighted in the partnership between GLAAD and Bonnier Publishing to create LGBTQ-inclusive children’s books, which has so far given us Prince and Knight
I’ll also be the first to say (and have, at length) that we still need more, with increased diversity in other dimensions (race, ethnicity, class, religion, abilities, etc.) as well. If OurShelves can help focus publishers’ attention on the need—and the market—they’ll be doing all families a great service.
Full disclosure: I have had some conversations with Alli Harper as she was developing OurShelves, but am not involved in the company and have no financial interest in it.