From April through July I read 27 total children’s and YA books. Compare that to March alone, when I read 29. Yikes! I definitely lost some focus in recent months, though I did read many more adult books (9) than I had earlier in the year. Among those, more than half were by or about diverse people.

Of the children’s books I read from April through July, 37% were diverse. (It’s worth noting that books that don’t qualify aren’t necessarily un-diverse. Several featured animal characters, and some were about nonfiction topics.)

In sum, over the last four months, my reading was about 42% diverse, which is pretty good, especially when compared with the rates at which these types of books are published. Also, it puts me one book away from my year-long goal of 50 diverse books!
Here are the diverse books I read for this period. I’ll put asterisks next to my favorites.

Row 1: (All children’s fiction) “Drum Dream Girl” by Margarita Engle, “Red Knit Cap Girl and the Reading Tree” by Naoko Stoop, “The Red Pencil” by Andrea Davis Pinkney (middle grade), “None of the Above” by I.W. Gregorio (young adult), “Firebird” by Misty Copeland

Row 2: (All children’s nonfiction) “The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind” by William Kamkwamba, “The Mangrove Tree: Planting Trees to Feed Families” by Susan Roth, “Wangari Maathai: The Woman who Planted Millions of Trees” by Franck Prévot, “Gordon Parks: How the Photographer Captured Black and White America” by Carole Boston Weatherford, “14 Cows for America” by Carmen Agra Deedy

Row 3: (All books for adults) “Fun Home” and “Are You My Mother” by Alison Bechdel (both graphic novels), “The Tusk that Did the Damage” by Tania James, “Above Us Only Sky” by Michele Young-Stone, “Boy, Snow, Bird” by Helen Oyeyemi