Adding a Diversity tag

Search for reviews tagged with new Diversity tag.

I have thought about adding new tags to make it easier for people to find books on special interest areas such as LGBT or multicultural or others, but have always hesitated for two reasons.



The first is that I don't in any way want to segregate such books. A good book is a good book, and I want to recommend it for its quality and readability. I want a librarian looking for excellent picture books to look at all the picture books.

The second is the queasy feeling that people might argue or object to terms I use (e.g., should it be LGBT, GLBT, LGBTQ, LGBTQA, TBLG or something else), or to determining whether a specific book deserves the tag (e.g., does having Hispanic main characters mean the book is diverse, or must that be a part of the story line).

Today, I've decided I am just being cowardly, and that I would rather provide more of a service and worry less about people who might take offense. Also, since the blog uses tags rather than shelves, I can tag this in addition to whatever other tags I use, so somebody seeing picture books will see these as well, but somebody looking for diversity would see various ages.

A couple of specifics. I use LGBT as a catch-all term, not to exclude anyone. If you prefer another term, go ahead and think that term when I use LGBT. Likewise, while I can see arguments against it, I will deem a book diverse if it either has people who look/seem/sound non-mainstream white Anglo Saxon Christian, especially in an illustrated book, because there are (sadly) so few picture books for non-white kids to relate to that even having characters of different races, ethnicities, religions. If you object, label the book differently on your blog.

Basically, please don't make a big deal out of what does or does not get tagged this way. The only exception is that if you think a book is extremely insensitive to racial, multicultural, ethnic or other groups, and I have not mentioned that, please do comment or bring it to my attention.

Search for reviews tagged with new Diversity tag.