Examining multicultural picture books for the early childhood classroom: possibilities and pitfalls / Una inspeccion de libros ilustrados multiculturales para los programas de la ninez temprana: posibilidades y peligros.

Abstract

Children's picture books have an increasingly significant place in early childhood classrooms. Picture books that depict the variety of ethnic, racial, and cultural groups within U.S. society (known generally as multicultural picture books) allow young children opportunities to develop their understanding of others, while affirming children of diverse backgrounds. This paper discusses the possibilities and the pitfalls involved in the selection of multicultural literature for use with young children, examines two books featuring Mexican American protagonists to illuminate issues and problems in the images the books present of Mexican Americans, discusses some contemporary theories on race as ways of understanding such issues and problems, and considers possible actions for early childhood educators and teacher education programs to take.

Introduction

Children's picture books have an increasingly significant place in U.S. early childhood classrooms. Fiction, poetry, and nonfiction offer young children a multitude of opportunities to gain information, to become familiar with print, to be entertained, and to experience perspectives other than their own. Picture books that depict the variety of ethnic, racial, and cultural groups within U.S. society (known generally as multicultural picture books) allow young children opportunities to develop their understanding of others, while affirming children of diverse backgrounds. In this paper, we will (1) discuss the possibilities, which we conceptualize as positive, and the pitfalls involved in the selection of multicultural literature for use with young children; (2) examine two books featuring Mexican American protagonists to illuminate issues and problems in the images the books present of Mexican Americans; (3) discuss some contemporary ideas about race as a way of looking at the possibilities and pitfalls of choosing multicultural picture books; and (4) invite further dialogue and action by early childhood educators and teacher education programs regarding race, children's literature, and young children.

Children's Literature and Early Childhood Education

The growing role of children's literature in the lives of young children may be seen in the numbers of books published per year. In 1940, 984 books for children were published in the United States. In 1997, there were 5,353 such books (Huck, Hepler, Hickman, & Kiefer, 2001). In a study of picture books reviewed or recommended in Young Children (the National Association for the Education of Young Children's practitioner journal), Reese (2001) found a similar increase. During the 9-year period from 1945 to 1954, 37 children's books were recommended, while 904 were recommended between 1990 and 1999. This increase reflects a growing awareness of what children's literature can bring to the early childhood classroom.

Uses of Children's Literature: Aesthetic, Psychosocial, and Instructional

Children's literature can serve several purposes, some of which are aesthetic, psychosocial, and informative/instructional.

Rosenblatt (1995) categorizes readers' involvement in a text along a continuum. At one end is aesthetic reading, in which the person is drawn into the story and participates through identification with characters. The primary goal is enjoyment or entertainment. At the other end of the continuum is efferent reading, in which the reader is primarily interested in gaining information. In their relationships with books, young children may operate all along Rosenblatt's continuum, using books for both enjoyment and learning.

Literature is also seen as having several psychosocial uses for young children. In general, literature is said to provide characters and events with which children can identify and through which they can consider their own actions, beliefs, and emotions. The characters and situations in books introduce children to what the world may look like through others' eyes and offer a chance to further construct their own views of self and the world. One important characteristic of high-quality children's literature, according to Temple, Martinez, Yokota, and Naylor (1998), is the degree to which it "tells the truth" about the human experience. "Moreover, the characters ... are true to life, and the insights the books imply are accurate, perhaps even wise" (p. 10). Alison Lurie and others argue that these insights may not always be what adults want children to understand. In fact, children's literature can often be "subversive," celebrating "daydreaming, disobedience, answering back, running away from home, and concealing one's private thoughts and feelings from unsympathetic grown-ups" (Lurie, 1990). Traditional literature in particular, such as legends and fairy tales, is sometimes seen as resonating with common cross-cultural childhood psychological concerns (Bettelheim, 1977) such as abuse, abandonment, and coming of age.

Traditional literature is also seen as having a didactic purpose, at least in original form. Myths, sagas, and other aspects of oral traditions are said to have been vehicles by which any society would pass on knowledge, ideas, and admonitions to its children, in the absence of a writing system. Feminist scholarship has reframed many European fairy tales as carrying the culture's models for young women (Rowe, 1986; Lieberman, 1986). Contemporary educators in the United States sometimes use traditional literature as a window on other cultures, but this practice is seen as problematic (Hearne, 1993; Zipes, 1986). Nonfiction, or informational books, have openly didactic purposes: to foster an interest in inquiry and involvement in the world (McElmeel, 1995) or to inform, instruct, and enlighten (Freedman, 1992). Nonfiction literature is expected to make clear distinctions between fact, theory, and opinion. Scientific, mathematical, and historical content must be accurate, verifiable, and up to date; and stereotypes must be avoided (Elleman, 1992). An increasing number of informational books are written and illustrated in a manner that provides aesthetic as well as learning experiences.

Some critics, educators, librarians, and others involved with children and their books assert that literature (except for nonfiction) is art and need not be concerned too much with being verifiable. Others, who see interaction with literature as one potentially powerful factor in the child's construction of knowledge about people and the world, argue that some types of fiction should be held to standards of accuracy and authenticity similar to those for informational books. In line with this concern, some publishers have reissued children's classics such as Hugh Lofting's Dr. Doolittle and Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, having altered or removed racist portrayals of Africans. Interest in accuracy and authenticity led Betsy Hearne (1993) to develop a scale for evaluating source notes in books of traditional literature; the ideal source note is explicit about a story's origin. Historical fiction in particular is the site of heated disagreement over the degree to which writers are accountable for historical and cultural accuracy (for examples, see Kohl, 1995; Reese et al., 2001).

One of the most persuasive rationales for sharing literature with young children is that it benefits language and literacy development. For years, researchers, teacher educators, parent educators, and parents have recognized the value of reading to children, and numerous studies document the beneficial effects of reading to preschool children (Scarborough & Dobrich, 1994). For instance, Wells's (1985) correlational study on the effects of picture book reading found that the frequency of listening to stories between the ages of 1 and 3 years was significantly associated with literacy and oral language skills as measured at age 5 by the children's teachers. Textbooks for future educators often include statements such as: "Reading aloud to children is one of the most useful ways of introducing them to the act of reading" (Krogh, 1994, p. 410).

The term "emergent literacy" began to appear in the early 1980s, as researchers sought to reconceptualize what young children know about reading, writing, and print before they begin formal schooling. Children as young as 1 and 2 years old are in the process of becoming literate (Sulzby & Teale, 1991), and the period of emergent literacy is said to continue until children read and write conventionally. This process can take place in the home or in community, day care, Head Start, pre-kindergarten, or formal kindergarten settings. The concept of emergent literacy casts the child as a "constructor of his or her own literacy" (Sulzby & Teale, 1991). Children create meaning from environmental symbols such as McDonald's golden arches (Goodman, 1987), as well as the illustrations and conventional print found in books.

Contemporary recognition and appreciation of the child's emerging literacy is such that Saracho and Spodek (1993) assert, "All early childhood teachers, at every level, must now be considered teachers of reading, even if they do not offer formal reading instruction" (p. xi).

Picture Books for Young Children

Picture books are the genre of choice for sharing with young children, whether teachers read aloud or the children use them independently. Picture books cross genre boundaries and may also be considered fiction, poetry, informational, or traditional literature. In a textbook frequently used with undergraduate preservice teachers, Temple, Martinez, Yokota, and Naylor (1998) identify three types of picture books: (1) wordless books, which rely solely on illustrations to tell a story; (2) picture storybooks, in which illustrations and text work together to tell the story; and (3) illustrated books, in which the text supplies most of the information but the illustrations augment what is said or serve as decoration (p. 171).

Words and illustrations do not simply tell stories. Together in picture books, they also create potentially powerful images of human beings. (See Zipes's [1986] comparison of "Little Red Riding Hood" illustrations.) The child sees representations of people--male and female, adult and child--in illustrations that foster impressions of whatever sorts of people are being portrayed (Lukens, 1990). In a sense, then, any given picture book featuring people may have a didactic outcome, even if teaching was not the book's intent.

Multicultural Children's Literature

When teachers share books with young children, they offer, among other things, exposure to ways of thinking about other human beings. For the child, illustrations and text combine to create particular views of individuals as well as groups of people--complete with messages about what those people are like.

Prior to the 1960s, people who were not European or European American were virtually invisible in children's literature, or they were depicted in negative and/or stereotypical representations (Aoki, 1993; Nieto, 1997)--a trend Harris (1993a) calls "pernicious" (p. 60). This invisibility gained national attention in 1965 when the Saturday Review published an article by librarian Nancy Larrick titled "The All-White World of Children's Books."

Sociocultural changes during the 1960s and 1970s fostered renewed interest in literature for adults and children that reflected "the diverse life experiences, traditions, histories, values, world views, and perspectives of the diverse cultural groups that make up a society" (Grant & Ladson-Billings, 1997, p. 185)--in other words, "multicultural literature." Taxel (1995) describes a trend toward addressing "the interests, concerns, and experiences of individuals and groups considered outside of the sociopolitical and cultural mainstream of American society" (p. 155). Initially, European Americans were the exclusive producers of new images of people outside the mainstream. Through the work of individuals and of groups such as the Council on Interracial Books for Children (MacCann, 2001), this situation changed gradually--some would say glacially--in the ensuing four decades. With varying degrees of success, one can now find children's picture books written or illustrated, or both, by African Americans, Asian Americans, Latino Americans, and Native Americans. Interest has also grown in children's books with accurate, respectful portrayals of gay/lesbian people, women, people with disabilities, and religions other than Christianity. A great many of these books are put out by small presses and face barriers to wider use that will be mentioned later in this paper. Overall, however, critics still see much room for progress.

Sims Bishop (1997) sees a dual role for multicultural children's literature; it can serve as a mirror or a window. A child may see his or her own life reflected in a book or may have an opportunity to see into someone else's life. Historically, children's books have given European American middle- and upper-class children the mirror but not the window. They could see themselves in the stories they read and heard, but they were unlikely to see anyone much different from themselves. Conversely, children outside the mainstream have had few literary mirrors that affirm their identities, although they had plenty of windows on life in the dominant culture of the United States.

Good multicultural literature can benefit all children in an early childhood classroom. Teachers enhance children's budding understanding and empathy when they make a point of sharing books that accurately and positively portray the backgrounds of the families in the classroom and that extend children's awareness to the significant groups in their community and the wider world (Derman-Sparks et al., 1989, p. 12).

Literary Criticism and Multicultural Children's Literature

In Playing in the Dark, Toni Morrison (1990) undertakes an in-depth examination of the presence and absence of images of Africans and African Americans in the adult American literary canon. A related body of critical literature has developed that examines children's literature for bias, stereotyping, and other sociocultural misinformation. Taxel (1995) and others consider such criticism of children's books to be essential "[g]iven the complicity of children's literature, and the rest of society's cultural apparatus, in providing legitimacy for racial and gender-related injustice and oppression ..." (p. 163).

These critics often focus on well-known children's books--including some winners of prestigious awards--to illuminate their points about Eurocentrism and related problems (Atleo et al., 1999; Moore & Hirschfelder, 1999; Slapin & Seale, 1998; Kohl, 1995). Using primary sources for historical and cultural information, they give voice to viewpoints not often heard in the world of children's literature. They raise issues of accuracy and authenticity, questioning the perspectives, and sometimes the motives, of European American authors and illustrators who tell stories about or on behalf of marginalized peoples. They also strive to enlighten the public about literature that offers accurate information and authentic insider perspectives.

This criticism is likely to be found outside the widely recognized journals. In fact, mainstream publications may be reluctant to include reviews that put forward what they consider "extraliterary" (i.e., political) criticism (Reese, 2000). In contrast, reviews in Multicultural Journal, The New Advocate, and Multicultural Review are likely to consider cultural and historical accuracy and authenticity in books they examine. A number of textbooks (Harris, 1993b; Lehr, 1995) with similar critical bent are aimed at future educators.

Common Pitfalls in Selecting Multicultural Books for Children

Popular but Problematic Books: The First Pitfall

Limited availability of criticism that addresses accuracy, authenticity, and related problems often leads to a major pitfall for teachers seeking multicultural books. Teachers are sometimes caught by the unexamined assumption that a book is multicultural and worthwhile if it has non-European-American characters or themes and is critically acclaimed in well-known journals. For example, Native American scholars Reese and Caldwell-Wood (1997) found several problems when they examined popular picture books written and illustrated by European Americans in which Native American people or ideas play a central role. They note that in these books, the texts and illustrations together present a set of images of Native Americans, and thus a particular way of thinking about them, that is inaccurate and potentially misleading. The books in question received favorable reviews in Horn Book and other mainstream journals, and they have enjoyed years of popularity.

One such book is the award-winning Brother Eagle, Sister Sky, which features illustrations by contemporary European American illustrator Susan Jeffers and text attributed to Seattle, a 19th-century leader of the Suquamish and Duwamish people of the Pacific Coast of North America, who was known to his people as Sealth. In 1992, it was among the top-selling books in the country--a rare achievement for a children's book. Its strong message of environmental consciousness appears to be the basis for its continuing broad appeal. Native American reviewers have, however, identified significant problems with the text and with the illustrations (Seale, n.d.; Reese & Caldwell-Wood, 1997).

The text of Brother Eagle, Sister Sky has an interesting history. According to a 1993 memorandum from the Washington/Northwest Collections office of the Washington State Library (see Appendix I), at least four versions of the speech attributed to Seattle have appeared through history. In January of 1854, he spoke at length during negotiations involving the Suquamish, the Duwamish, and the U.S. government. Historians agree that the speech was translated into Chinook jargon "on the spot" since Seattle did not speak English. The first print version of what he said was not published until October 29, 1887, in a Seattle Sunday Star column by Dr. Henry A. Smith, a witness to the 1854 speech who had reconstructed and translated the speech from his notes. In the late 1960s, poet William Arrowsmith rewrote the speech in a somewhat more contemporary style, though it is still similar to Smith's version (Ellen Levesque, personal communication, September 29, 1993).

Later, Ted Perry created another version for "Home," a historical program about the northwest rain forest televised in 1971 (Jones & Sawhill, 1992). This version was constructed as if it were a letter to President Franklin Pierce, though "no such letter was ever written by or for Chief Seattle" (Ellen Levesque, personal communication, September 29, 1993). A shortened edition of the "letter" was exhibited at Expo '74 in Spokane, Washington.

At the end of Brother Eagle, Sister Sky, Susan Jeffers writes, "The origins of Chief Seattle's words are partly obscured by the mists of time." She mentions Smith's version and states that, like Joseph Campbell and unnamed others, she has adapted the message. Readers and listeners are left with the impression that the book offers perhaps an abridged version of the actual speech. The Suquamish tribe's Web site (http://www.suquamish.nsn.us/) reproduces the 1887 version, which addresses with great depth of feeling the state of Native-White relations in that place and time. In it, Seattle reluctantly, and perhaps with some anger, agrees that he and his people will move to a reservation, on the condition that they be able to visit their ancestors' graves without interference. Environmental responsibility does not appear to be the topic.

At some point after the first edition, copies of Brother Eagle, Sister Sky began to feature dust jackets with a statement from Jewell Praying Wolf James, "lineal nephew of Chief Seattle," saying that ".... In Brother Eagle, Sister Sky, Chief Seattle's words have been transformed into an experience children of all ages and localities can use...."

The transformation of Seattle's words in the book exemplifies a problem Native American scholars, critics, and activists frequently identify: the co-opting of Native voices by non-Native writers. The several European Americans, including Jeffers, who have seemed to act as conduits for Seattle's words have in fact altered his original message considerably. Valuable and heartfelt though its environmental message may be, and despite the apparent support of Seattle's descendant, Brother Eagle, Sister Sky is seen as an example of how Native people's words have been obscured through appropriation.

Native American reviewers also note problems with the illustrations in Brother Eagle, Sister Sky. Counting the cover and end papers, there are 16 paintings. Horses figure prominently in 8 of these. Seattle himself was not from a horse culture. The Suquamish and Duwamish homeland is the northwest coast of the United States, and their traditional clothing, homes, and means of transport reflect that location.

Jeffers's illustrations, however, frequently represent Plains cultures. Current book jackets feature a quote from Jeffers: "My aim ... was to portray people and artifacts from a wide array of nations because the philosophy expressed in the text is one shared by most Native Americans." Without a note in the text explaining which cultures are portrayed in each picture, however, young readers have no way to know that Seattle's people did not wear large feathered headdresses and fringed buckskin, live in tipis, and spend a lot of time on horseback. Long-standing stereotypes about Native dress and lifeways are thus reinforced (Reese & Caldwell-Wood, 1997).

Moreover, several illustrations, including the cover, show Native people as partially transparent, ghost-like figures. In contrast, the blue-eyed boy on the cover looks solid and lifelike, as does a group that appears to be a modern European American family at the end of the book. In combination with the fact that all Native people are represented in historical traditional rather than contemporary clothing, this portrayal suggests that Native Americans, in contrast to European Americans, no longer exist as a viable people. They have vanished and are only memories or spirits. Thus Brother Eagle, Sister Sky is not only seen as historically inaccurate in attributing its words to Chief Seattle; it also is viewed as perpetuating common visual stereotypes of Native Americans.

Reese and Caldwell-Wood also critique authenticity in Arrow to the Sun by Gerald McDermott (1978) and Knots on a Counting Rope by Bill Martin and John Archambault (1987), illustrated by Ted Rand. They are not alone in their criticism (Slapin & Seale, 1998). In Arrow to the Sun, author/artist Gerald McDermott misrepresents Pueblo social life, religious beliefs, and ceremonial practices (Reese & Caldwell-Wood, 1997). For Pueblo people, kivas are places of ceremony and instruction, not places of trial, but in Arrow to the Sun, the protagonist goes through a series of trials in the kivas. Readers may thus be misinformed about Pueblo beliefs. Furthermore, Perry Nodelman (1988), who is otherwise not especially critical of the book, notes that McDermott's uses of line, shape, and color differ in important ways from authentic Pueblo kiva art (pp. 94-95). This remaking of traditional art is visually engaging (it won a Caldecott Medal), but it fails to reflect the reality of either Pueblo design or religious belief (Reese & Caldwell-Wood, 1997, p. 175).

In Knots on a Counting Rope, Ted Rand's illustrations suggest primarily that the story is set in the Navajo nation, but his work shows a mix of material culture from several different nations. For example, traditional Navajo men in the story are shown with hairstyles typical of the Atsina, Blackfeet, Mandan, and Piegan nations. Also, Pueblo people are shown at a horse race wearing traditional ceremonial clothing that would be inappropriate for such an occasion (Reese & Caldwell-Wood, 1997, p. 177). Many readers have no way of knowing how to identify such problems and are left with misinformation about several Native cultures, while Native readers from those cultures are confronted with the discomfort of being misrepresented.

The responses of Native critics to these three books suggest that neither critical acclaim nor representations of cultures other than European American can guarantee that a book is good multicultural literature. Regardless of how engaging the stories are, or how important their themes, even their subtle inaccuracies may contribute to cultural misunderstanding and to potential discomfort for children whose cultures are inaccurately portrayed. Both the mirror and the window are thus distorted.

Two More Pitfalls in Selecting Multicultural Children's Books

Observers of early childhood classrooms notice two other problems that frequently occur when educators look for multicultural picture books. One is the assumption that a single book about a group can adequately portray that group's experience. We see this situation, for example, in a classroom where observance of African American History Month begins and ends with reading aloud from a book about Dr. Martin Luther King.

The other pitfall is the mistaken belief that one can easily find a wide range of good-quality multicultural literature in libraries and bookstores, so that one has only to visit either venue to locate authentic and accurate representations of non-mainstream groups. Such books exist in growing numbers, but they are not so readily available as one might hope.

The following analysis of two picture books featuring Mexican Americans leads into discussion of both of these pitfalls.

Picture Books Depicting Mexican Americans: Background Information

After the 1990 census, Mexican Americans were identified as the fastest-growing ethnolinguistic group in the United States. At that time, they constituted 5% of the country's entire population and 60% of the Hispanic-origin peoples in the United States (Barrera, Liguori, & Salas, 1993, p. 207). These figures are not, however, reflected in the number of children's books portraying Mexican American people. According to a study by Barrera and Garza de Cortes (1997), the annual average number of Mexican American children's books has risen from approximately 6 between 1940 and 1973 to 19 in the period between 1992 and 1995 (pp. 129-130).

In the following two sections, we consider two picture books with main characters who are Mexican American: A Day's Work by Eve Bunting (1994), illustrated by Ronald Himler, and A Gift from Papa Diego by Benjamin Alire Saenz (1998), illustrated by Geronimo Garcia. For each book, the plot is summarized and the text/illustration relationship examined to find what each book offers children in the way of a mirror or a window on Mexican American cultural experience.

A Day's Work

When A Day's Work begins, Francisco and his grandfather stand with other day laborers in a parking lot, waiting for work. Francisco is a boy of indeterminate age, perhaps between 8 and 10. In the second paragraph, he reveals three facts to this group of strangers: first, that his father has died, leaving his family in financial trouble; second, that his grandfather has recently arrived in the United States to help them; and third, that he plans to use his own English skills to help his Spanish-speaking grandfather find work.

Without telling his grandfather, Francisco decides to lie to a potential employer about his grandfather's skill as a gardener. He and his grandfather hurry to the employer's van, and the boy pushes away another man who tries to get in with them. The employer, Ben, takes them to an embankment to pull weeds and drives away. The two work all day in the hot sun. As they are congratulating themselves on a beautiful job, Ben returns and is outraged to find that they have pulled all his ice plants and left the weeds. Over Francisco's protests, Abuelo offers to repair the damage and remove the weeds without pay. Ben sees that Abuelo is honorable, allows them to come back the next day, and hints that he might hire the grandfather for more than just day labor. Reflecting that "he had begun to learn the important things, too" (p. 32), Francisco takes his grandfather's hand and leads him homeward through a golden cityscape.

Himler's watercolor and gouache illustrations are expressive and evocative, with a kind of gravity that sometimes hints at threat or overwhelming situations. In these illustrations, children see Mexican Americans who:

* Wait for work

* Scramble for work

* Lie to get work

* Push others out of the way to get work

* Are taken somewhere to work

* Work close to an area of high-priced homes

* Work hard and make a serious mistake

* Rest after working, not knowing they have made the mistake

* Are scolded by an employer

* Feel ashamed, dismayed, at fault

* Seek to correct the mistake

* In adulthood, assert moral leadership

* Are allowed by the employer to correct their mistake

* Face the consequences of their actions, thereby winning the employer's respect

* Are at a disadvantage if they do not speak English

* In childhood, mediate between adults who speak English and those who speak Spanish

* Walk home together

* Are males in a male work world

A Day's Work is entirely in English, with the exception of the words abuelo, senora, gracias, bueno, and two two-word phrases. The text refers to Abuelo's having come from Mexico but does not specify what part of the country. There is reference to the tortillas Francisco's mother sends for their lunches and to the chorizo the boy wants to buy with their earnings. Abuelo praises Francisco's English skills. We see the kind of role reversal many immigrant families experience, in which a child who is able to speak English becomes a go-between for the family and the dominant culture (Wong Fillmore, 1991). One also sees the boy taking the lead in finding work, to the point where he lies and pushes away a full-grown man in order to get it. Although Francisco's mother is mentioned, readers see and hear only males in this representation of Mexican Americans--hard-working manual laborers.

A Gift from Papa Diego

A Gift from Papa Diego is the story of 6-year-old Diego, who lives in El Paso, Texas. He loves and identifies closely with his paternal grandfather, who lives far away, across the border in Chihuahua. This book is a bilingual parallel book; each page has both English and Spanish versions of the unfolding story. Little Diego lives with his parents and his teasing older sister in a house with a yard. He wants nothing more than to be with his abuelo on his 7th birthday. When a conversation with his father shows that he is not likely to get that wish, Little Diego begs for a Superman costume because he believes it will help him fly to Papa Diego. On his birthday, his family wakes him with a traditional song and he goes off to school imagining how he will fly to Chihuahua if only he receives that costume as a gift. That evening, his wish for the costume comes true, but his hopes are dashed when it does not help him fly. He retreats to his room. When his father invites him to rejoin the family, he does--and finds Papa Diego in the kitchen. Their reunion is joyful.

At the end of the book are a page of notes about the places in the book, a glossary of Spanish terms, and an author-illustrator biography page. The illustrations are photographs of three-dimensional painted terra cotta creations. The mood is light, cheerful, but with a solid, substantial feeling. Children who look at these pages see Mexican Americans who:

* Think about things and explore the world

* Have father-son talks about family issues

* Hug each other

* Wear a tie to work

* Read

* Imagine and daydream

* Long to cross a border that separates them from loved ones

* Have family conversations while preparing food

* Experience sibling rivalry

* Play the guitar and sing to a loved one

* Greet each other with affection

* Act on a mistaken idea, with no harm done

* Do kind things for others

* As adults, are sources of love and guidance

* As children, play, go to school, and interact with family members

* Eat together as a family

* Are in all stages of life: infant/child/parent/grandparent

* Are female, are male

* Write books or illustrate them

A Gift from Papa Diego contains detailed, culturally specific information about language and customs, both in the story and in the glossary at the end of the book:

* the Spanish text and the Spanish phrases embedded in the English text,

* the mention of four specific foods,

* family discussions of Chihuahua and the U.S-Mexican border, and

* the special birthday song Little Diego's family sings.

All are cultural markers, indicators that in fact this story is about a Mexican American family. Males and females alike have important roles. The story seamlessly shows how central their culture is in their daily lives.

A Day's Work integrates a few Spanish words and refers to two specific foods. It does not mention a specific area of Mexico or relate specific customs (such as the birthday song in Papa Diego). It counters the "lazy Mexican" stereotype and offers a look at the socioeconomic problems Mexican American immigrants often face, particularly those who do not know English. Its principal focus seems to be on the moral lesson about honesty in the context of working to survive.

The Second Pitfall: Believing a Single Book Is Adequate

Comparison of the two books shows what a difference an insider perspective can make. It is in the authors' approaches to language that the contrast is most apparent. With text in two languages and embedded references to the desirability of speaking both, Papa Diego overtly supports--even invites--dual-language fluency. In A Day's Work, Francisco is praised for his English skills, and Abuelo "doesn't speak English yet" [italics added]. None of the employers, including Ben, seems to know any Spanish. Spanish fluency is presented as unimportant or even unnecessary. In fact, not knowing English is implicitly the root, so to speak, of the trouble Francisco and his grandfather have. Abuelo cannot tell that Francisco has lied to persuade Ben to hire them, and he cannot communicate with Ben about the gardening job. He is completely dependent on his grandson to negotiate these transactions. Bunting's portrayal of Abuelo's predicament, intentionally or not, is situated within the politicized discourse on language in the United States.

A Day's Work is a socially conscious morality tale, presented as a story about a boy and his grandfather. Every major review of A Day's Work stresses the moral lesson about not telling lies and about making reparations after creating a problem. Teachers report using the book specifically to generate discussion about honesty. Bunting is known for her portrayals of people, particularly people of color, who live in poverty; it seems likely that in A Day's Work she means to make a statement (arguably a positive one) about Mexican Americans in U.S. society. A Gift from Papa Diego, on the other hand, is a story about a boy and his grandfather--a story about love and familial devotion. Its picture of Mexican American experience is both complex and positive.

While teaching a children's literature class, we had a conversation with a Latina student who objected to A Day's Work. She felt that its outsider perspective resulted in images that fed into the stereotype of Mexican American men as manual laborers. Although the book seemed sympathetic, it still made them none too bright. Not being able to tell a weed from a desirable plant, she said, made Francisco and his grandfather look unnecessarily and unrealistically stupid. She asserted that a Mexican American child reading or hearing this book would likely feel embarrassed. Unimpressed by the fact that A Day's Work was named "A 1994 Americas Commended Title" by the Consortium of Latin American Studies Programs, she decided its problems outweighed any merits it had, and she would use several other books in her classroom instead (A. Herrera, personal communication, March 23, 2000). Whether or not one agrees with this future teacher's rejection of A Day's Work, her response shows awareness of critical issues and a commitment to providing authenticity and accuracy.

She also avoids the pitfall of assuming that a single book can adequately portray any group's experience. We would not propose that Papa Diego alone is adequate to portray Mexican Americans for young children, of course--Little Diego's family's white-collar lifestyle is by no means the whole story of Mexican American life. One would need to seek out other titles to create a collection that provides an adequate window and an undistorted mirror.

Availability: A Third Pitfall

Mention of the search for titles leads to another pitfall of selecting multicultural picture books: the notion that accurate and authentic books with insider perspectives are readily available. Recognition and availability are significant factors for teachers seeking to use multicultural children's books. Availability has little to do with literary content but may affect whether a teacher even knows a book exists.

For instance, we had the following experiences when looking for copies of A Day's Work and A Gift from Papa Diego:

* The local library system had four copies of A Day's Work, all of which were checked out until the following week. Two nearby towns also had copies on the shelf.

* The local library had one copy of A Gift from Papa Diego, which was on the shelf and had never been checked out.

* The person who answered the phone at a local bookstore exclaimed, "Beautiful book!" when asked if they had a copy of A Day's Work. They had more than one copy in stock. She did not need to look up this information in the computer.

* The same bookstore employee had never heard of Papa Diego. She looked it up in the computer and said, "We don't stock it, but I can order it for you."

* Both titles were available from online bookseller Amazon.com. As of this writing, the sales ranking of A Day's Work was 3,822. Papa Diego ranked far behind at 243,386.

These experiences are by no means unique. Nor are they surprising, given the nature of the publishing and book-selling businesses. Eve Bunting's position in the world of children's literature is such that her books gain instant recognition. She has published over 100 books from the 1970s to the present. Ronald Himler is also well known; he sells his book illustrations on his Web site. Bunting and Himler do their work for major publishing houses. A Day's Work is put out by Clarion Books, a division of publishing giant Houghton Mifflin Company.

Benjamin Saenz and illustrator Geronimo Garcia do not garner the same recognition. Papa Diego is the first children's book for Saenz, primarily a writer of poetry and adult fiction. Garcia works as a commercial artist in Texas. Cinco Puntos Press, their publisher, is a small press with deep connections to Latina/Latino communities. In 1999, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) rescinded grant money promised to Cinco Puntos Press to assist with publishing a translation of The Story of Colors by Subcomandante Marcos, controversial leader of the Zapatista resistance in Chiapas, Mexico (Chouteau, 1999). A private foundation subsequently supplied money for the book. Cinco Puntos has since put out another book by Marcos with funding from the same foundation (Byrd, 2000).

Both Papa Diego and A Day's Work were favorably reviewed in Horn Book and other major publications. A librarian at the local library was impressed enough by Papa Diego to order a copy, but it remained on the shelf while all copies of A Day's Work were in use. A local bookstore stocked A Day's Work, but not Papa Diego. If the book is not visible, despite positive reviews, potential buyers will not be able to browse through it during their selection processes, and they are unlikely to know it exists.

A Fourth Pitfall: Time

Although the possibilities of using good multicultural literature in the classroom can be exciting, teachers can feel overwhelmed by the prospect of finding and evaluating the books. They do not want to offend anyone, nor do they want to harm any of the children they teach, but they worry they might inadvertently select and share inappropriate books. Typically, teachers' days are already busy and even fragmented; any new task, however worthwhile, can appear monumental.

Reliable, in-depth background information about the diverse groups and cultures in the United States is essential to evaluating multicultural children's literature. Unfortunately, such information may not have been part of teachers' basic elementary and secondary education, nor part of their everyday experience. As a result, many teachers find themselves trying to construct a complex new knowledge base in their adulthood. In the process, they may also need to deconstruct misinformation and biases they have absorbed (Southern Poverty Law Center, 2001), which adds an emotional challenge to the problem of finding time to locate and use available resources for helping children learn about other cultures.

We have discussed four problems teachers may encounter when seeking multicultural picture books for young children. Highly acclaimed books that portray groups other than European Americans, such as the Native American themed books mentioned earlier, may be criticized for perpetuating stereotypes and mistaken ideas. Similarly, as shown in the discussion of two books about Mexican Americans, a single book is unlikely to give an adequate picture of any given culture. Third, a teacher seeking high-quality multicultural books may be hampered by lack of author/illustrator recognition and lack of access to small presses with tiny marketing budgets. Time is the final pitfall; teachers' busy schedules can make the already challenging task of finding and evaluating good multicultural children's literature seem overwhelming.

Educators and preservice teachers can keep in mind that learning how to recognize and share good multicultural literature with children is a process, as is learning about people different from oneself. Having undertaken it, they can expect to make mistakes or errors in judgment. When that happens, they can acknowledge the errors and use them to inform their future decisions.

Theories about Race as Lenses on Selecting Multicultural Children's Literature

Educators and others who share literature with young children are often concerned about the pitfalls we have mentioned. They may wonder what might make teachers so vulnerable to the pitfalls we have described. They may question why many books with stereotyping, bias, and inaccuracies are still being published and circulated, while titles with unbiased, accurate representations may go unrecognized. They may also ask what might be behind the frequent failure of reviewers and award committees to note problems with accuracy and authenticity.

In this section, we employ some of the contemporary theory and scholarship about race and racism to address some of the common concerns educators and others raise regarding the pitfalls involved in selecting good multicultural children's literature.

Vulnerability to Errors in Selecting the Literature

Those who want to select good-quality multicultural literature for children may wonder why they and their colleagues are vulnerable to the pitfalls described here. The answer may lie in factors that have roots in childhood.

The value of diversity may not have been recognized within many communities, particularly within schools, until recently. Even now, textbooks may do little to advance multicultural awareness (Meltzer, 2001; Loewen, 1995; Slapin, 1995). Multiculturalism and the implementation of an anti-bias curriculum have been significant currents of reform in early childhood education in the past decade. As a result, some teachers may find themselves trying to construct a complex new knowledge base within a short time, either in teacher education programs or in classrooms with diverse populations. The anti-bias curriculum (Derman-Sparks et al., 1989) has its roots in a theory that oppressions such as racism and sexism arise from and are perpetuated by ignorance about and fear of difference. It takes an activist stance on bias, justice, and fairness, and it emphasizes the relationship between adult and child in the early childhood setting as the site of social change. The anti-bias paradigm assumes that modeling, intervention, and teaching can move children toward attitudes they need to get on well in an increasingly diverse world. It places the teacher in a position to critically examine pedagogy and the classroom environment, and to make changes that affirm diversity and help children resist bias.

Teaching in the anti-bias paradigm carries considerable responsibility. It is the individual educator who decides how to intervene when children exhibit bias, who selects the literature, who directs children's attention toward (or away from) images that further their understanding of other people and themselves. In the process, teachers may need to deconstruct misinformation and bias they have accumulated, adding an emotional challenge to the problem of finding time to locate and use resources that help prepare young children for life in a diverse world. Statistics show that, nationally, the majority of young women and men in early childhood teacher education programs are European American, disproportionate to the diversity their classrooms will present. These future teachers are likely to come from environments that did not provide the opportunity, the necessity, or the tools for critical thinking about constructions of difference, bias, and race. They may believe that they do not "have culture"--that "culture" is an attribute of marginalized groups.

Along with accurate and unbiased information about the diverse groups (including European American cultures) within society, "race consciousness" is viewed by some theorists and scholars as an essential component of being able to identify and eliminate racism in its various contexts (Sheets, 2000, p. 16). (Racial identity development among other groups, such as "Black racial identity" [Sheets, 2000, p. 16] have also been explored, and may also have a bearing on how a teacher selects children's literature for classroom use.) Peggy McIntosh's (1998) "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack" urges European Americans to critique the unspoken benefits of being White, most of which are assumed to be "normal" parts of life. Racial identity theorists Lawrence and Tatum (1998) have proposed that there is a developmental continuum of awareness in Whites' racial identity and related behavior, which can serve as a tool for critical appraisal of individual beliefs and attitudes. Some contemporary narratives may support this view, including those by Jewish American teacher and author Vivian Paley (1999, 2000), which highlight changes in her understanding of herself and the children and adults with whom she comes in contact.

It has been argued, then, that factors such as schooling that lacks salient information about the diversity of U.S. society, and that instead presents bias and misinformation; "White privilege," which obscures the real meaning of race in American life; and racial identity development, which reflects an individual's level of awareness about the role of race in his or her life and the wider world, all affect cultural awareness and understanding. These in turn affect how an individual interprets and uses children's literature. Teachers may be less vulnerable to the pitfalls if they are aware of deficiencies in their schooling, of the nature of White privilege, and of their own racial identity development.

Continuing Publication and Circulation of Books with Problematic Images

Teachers and others who want to select literature with strong authentic and accurate images of people from all groups in society often ask why authors and publishers continue to put out new books with problematic images, and why such books continue to circulate while titles with unbiased, accurate representations may go unrecognized.

Another developing theoretical perspective offers a possible explanation for such phenomena. Gloria Ladson-Billings (1998) and William F. Tate (Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995) use critical race theory (CRT) as a framework for discussing the impact of race and racism in all aspects of education. CRT has its roots in critical legal studies, which examine extralegal social, economic, and political factors that affect the legal system and result in unequal treatment under the law. CRT challenges the dominant view that White European American experience is or should be the normative standard; it is presented as a form of oppositional scholarship that is grounded in the ways people of color in the United States have experienced racial oppression. It incorporates the use of literary narrative and storytelling in challenging the ways race is constructed in society (Villenas, Deyhle, & Parker, 1999). Delgado (1995) describes the endemic nature of racism in American society. It is not a series of isolated incidents, but is embedded, institutionalized--deeply ingrained and sometimes blatant yet often so subtle that the society's members cannot see it. Critical race theory asserts that racism in the United States privileges persons of European background, with class and gender as additional factors. In effect, people of the mainstream learn from early on not to recognize racism or other oppressions, and to ignore or dismiss voices raising such issues. Thus myths of European American (White) superiority and "normality" are maintained.

Hibbitts (1994) views language (particularly metaphor) and other visual imagery as being manipulated to perpetuate the status quo in the field of law; his observations may have implications for studies of any medium employing words and visual images, including children's literature. Critical theorists McCarthy and Crichlow (1993) point out that members of minority groups in the United States tend not to have central control over the production of images of themselves. According to CRT, then, bias and cultural misinformation are present in children's literature in part because people outside the mainstream are not the ones creating the images; members of the dominant culture are creating representations based on their own mistaken assumptions of what the "others" are like.

What will be published, who will illustrate it, and how it will be marketed are all decisions that, historically and currently, rest primarily with European Americans, who own the largest publishing houses and continue to dominate the key decision-making positions. According to CRT, they are not likely to recognize or acknowledge the roles race and privilege play in the choices they make, and change comes "only when there is some perceived benefit" for those who hold the power (Asch, 2000). Decisions of authors and publishers figure prominently in Melissa Kay Thompson's (2001) "A Sea of Good Intentions: Native Americans in Books for Children," an example of how legal scholarship and literary criticism may inform one another regarding race and bias. Thompson draws parallels between bias in specific children's books (including popular contemporary literature) and bias in specific encounters Native Americans have had with the legal system, asserting that the court decisions and the books reflect the same underlying racism and support for the idea of White superiority.

Reviews and Awards That Fail to Acknowledge Inaccuracy and Inauthenticity

People seeking good multicultural literature often find that reviewers and award committees do not take into account issues of cultural and historical accuracy and authenticity.

Critical race theory and racial identity development theory may again offer insights into this situation. Criticism of children's literature, too, has historically been the domain of European Americans. Review journals such as Horn Book and School Library Journal play an important role in whether or not a book is recognized. The major journals are headed by European Americans, though certainly in recent years, these journals have sought out a more diverse group of reviewers and critical voices. They have also reviewed a number of multicultural books. Even so, mainstream critical favor sometimes falls upon a "multicultural" book that is subsequently panned by reviewers from the group being portrayed. Oyate, an organization that reviews and provides insider perspectives on Native Americans in literature, critiques several books on their Web site that found favor with mainstream reviewers (http://www.oyate.org/books-to-avoid/index.html).

Works by European American writers and illustrators continue to dominate the lists of winners of the two oldest prestigious awards--the Caldecott and Newbery Medals. Some of the winners have been later criticized for racist content (as well as sexism and other problems). A slowly growing field of prizes has been intentionally created to bring attention to works of multicultural literature, though some objections have been made to such awards (Aronson, 2001). The Coretta Scott King Award (http://www.ala.org/srrt/csking/), the Tomas Rivera Award (http://www.schooledu.swt.edu/subpages/tomasrivera/index.html [ECRP Editor's note (12/21/04): this url is no longer active. See: http://www.education.txstate.edu/subpages/tomasrivera/]), the Pura Belpre Award (http://www.ala.org/alsc/belpre.html), and the New Voices Award (http://www.leeandlow.com/editorial/voices.html) are examples. An award for Native American children's literature is being discussed; members of the American Indian Library Association expect to announce the first awards in the next two years (http://www.nativeculture.com/lisamitten/aila.html).

Hade (1997) notes, "The meanings we hold about race, class, and gender (many of which may be stereotypes) mediate how we interpret text" (p. 235). Therefore, one must attend closely to the "premise that cultural awareness and understanding are prerequisites for the development and use of multicultural literature" (Barrera, Liguori, & Salas, 1993, p. 205). Like the teachers mentioned earlier, critics and award committee members may be evaluating books through a lens provided by schooling that presented inaccurate and biased history and social studies content and did little to promote cultural awareness and understanding. They may also lack critical insight into their own racial identity development and its impact on their individual approaches to children's literature.

Using Theories of Race to Examine Children's Literature

Ideas about race theory may be useful in facilitating "reading against the grain" at a deep level, providing teachers with both the rationale and the insights to select books with strong positive images of people from groups that have been marginalized. Reading against the grain is described as "a way to examine the unexamined, question the unquestioned, and hold up to scrutiny the unspoken assertions the text is making about the way lives are lived in society" (Temple, Martinez, Yokota, & Naylor, 1998, p. 43). It entails interrogating the literature based on such questions as:

* Are characters "outside the mainstream culture" depicted as individuals or as caricatures?

* Does their representation include significant specific cultural information? Or does it follow stereotypes?

* Who has the power in this story? What is the nature of their power, and how do they use it?

* Who has wisdom? What is the nature of their wisdom, and how do they use it?

* What are the consequences of certain behaviors? What behaviors or traits are rewarded, and how? What behaviors are punished, and how?

* How is language used to create images of people of a particular group? How are artistic elements used to create those images?

* Who has written this story? Who has illustrated it? Are they inside or outside the groups they are presenting? What are they in a position to know? What do they claim to know?

* Whose voices are heard? Whose are missing?

* What do this narrative and these pictures say about race? Class? Culture? Gender? Age? Resistance to the status quo?

The roots of this type of reading against the grain go back several decades. In 1948, for example, the National Council of Teachers of English published We Build Together, which featured "Criteria for Judging Books about Negroes for Young People" (Rollins, 1948, p. 4), a list of questions much like those listed above. The Council on Interracial Books for Children created Guidelines for Selecting Bias-free Textbooks and Storybooks in 1980; it serves as a model for similar documents today.

The point of reading against the grain is not to find "perfect" multicultural books. No such thing exists, nor is it likely that there are any books that are free of ideology. The purpose is to help illuminate the places that bias, stereotypes, and misinformation might be hidden--hidden, perhaps, even from the authors and illustrators who produce the images.

The critical literature about multicultural books can help educators to read against the grain themselves and help them guide children in the process. In her textbook Children and Books, Zena Sutherland (1991) writes, "The professional teacher, librarian, reviewer, or editor should know both the books themselves and the critical literature, since criticism entails making judgments that ought to be informed and objective" (p. 25).

If teachers are to interrogate literature effectively, they need to be aware of critical reviews that touch on issues addressed in critical race theory. They can look to journals such as Multicultural Review (http://www.mcreview.com/), Multicultural Education, and The New Advocate (http://www.christopher-gordon.com/newadvocate.htm [ECRP Editor's note (11-13-03): This URL is no longer active]). The September 2001 issue of The Lion and the Unicorn addresses critical race theory directly. They can also become familiar with more specialized publications such as Studies in American Indian Literatures (http://www.richmond.edu/faculty/ASAIL/sail-hp.html), African American Review (http://web.indstate.edu/artsci/AAR/), and Asian Perspectives (http://www.uhpress.hawaii.edu/journals/ap/). The Smithsonian Institution also maintains a bibliography of review of books featuring Native Americans (http://nmnhwww.si.edu/anthro/outreach/Indbibl/bibliogr.html). [ECRP Editor's note (04-12-05): This URL has changed: http://www.nmnh.si.edu/anthro/outreach/Indbibl/]

Educators can also become familiar with smaller publishers such as Cinco Puntos (http://cincopuntos.com) and Children's Book Press (http://www.cbookpress.org/). [ECRP Editor's note (09-08-04): This URL has changed: http://www.childrensbookpress.org/] Another small press with a multicultural focus is Lee and Low, which is owned by Asian Americans (http://www.leeandlow.com/home/index.html). Organizations such as Oyate, which focuses on Native American literature (http://www.oyate.org), are potential sources of books with insider perspectives. Teachers need to know they need not settle for images that mislead and miseducate. For example, they may replace the problematic uses and portrayals of Native American life in Brother Eagle, Sister Sky; Knots on a Counting Rope; and Arrow to the Sun (see Appendix II) with books like A River Lost by Lynn Bragg (Metis), The Good Luck Cat by Joy Harjo (Muscogee Creek), and Jingle Dancer by Cynthia Smith (Muscogee Creek) (see Appendix III). Such books provide substantial views of contemporary Native Americans as people who live in modern houses, hold down jobs, have pets, take on environmental issues, and honor their own cultures in specific ways. The books by Bragg, Harjo, and Smith also give children access to authentic Native American voices. The Good Luck Cat and Jingle Dancer received awards from Wordcraft Circle, a Native American writers' organization, in 2001.

Knowing how to help children read against the grain in the literature they encounter is an important skill for teachers, one which is already part of some courses in teacher education programs. It is sometimes argued that books in which bias is openly and uncritically expressed can be used to good effect if teachers point out the flaws and discuss how and why such negative and inaccurate representations came to be. Such adult guidance is seen as facilitating children's greater awareness of stereotyping in literature and impressing on them the need for more accurate representation (Smithsonian Institution, 1996). Conversely, it is argued that few adults can themselves recognize the problems, let alone guide children effectively toward understanding the stereotypes and lack of historical context contained in the books (Thompson, 2001, p. 369).

A robust tradition exists in early childhood education of taking into account children's prior experience and building upon what they already know in order to facilitate learning (Dewey, 1938; Katz & Chard, 1991). While frank discussions of prejudice, racism, and other oppressions are essential to enabling children to recognize and oppose them (Derman-Sparks et al., 1989), developmental factors may intervene that render such discussions problematic (Katz, 1999) even when teachers and parents do fully recognize the bias in books and in society as a whole. It may therefore be in the best interest of all children to have solid grounding in accurate, culturally sensitive images before attempting to deal with problematic books. The positive images are seen as constituting a body of prior knowledge, a basis from which to question and critique bias. Within this knowledge base (to return to Sims Bishop's metaphor), children from groups outside the mainstream are affirmed by undistorted mirrors, and other children's awareness benefits from the view through clear windows.

Seeing Teacher Education through Theories about Race

Assumptions about others and self can be deeply ingrained, according to critical race theory and racial identity development theory. Multicultural children's literature "is only as culturally enlightened as the people who create it and use it" (Barrera, Liguori, & Salas, 1993, p. 235). Teachers need to see and identify the problems within books like Brother Eagle, Sister Sky, or to note the differences between A Gift from Papa Diego and A Day's Work. Future teachers are therefore seen as needing the guidance of early childhood teacher education programs that offer significant opportunities to read, hear, and discuss the critical perspectives on ideology, representation, and identity as they relate to literature, particularly multicultural literature. Teacher educators who have interrogated their own attitudes and beliefs are seen as being in a position to use this and related understanding to help preservice teachers prepare to critique race, power, and privilege in their lives and in the wider society, so they can become more effective teachers (Sleeter, 1998).

Such changes go far beyond a single course; they would involve reconceptualizing the foundations on which early childhood professional preparation rests--incorporating the child-developmental paradigm that has dominated into an expanded view of the field, that intentionally and directly addresses teachers' and children's developing understanding of self and multiculturalism. Contemporary professional preparation programs in social work and counseling psychology often require a "didactic therapy" or self-awareness component as well as practicum experience and extensive coursework on theory and practice. The didactic therapy component, considered a key to becoming an effective practitioner, is likely to include both individual and group work. Those who advocate such deep change in teacher education do not suggest a requirement of personal therapy for early childhood teacher preparation, but rather coursework and practicum designed to promote critical awareness of one's own background as well as attitudes and beliefs about others (Sheets, 2000, p. 16).

Comments

We do not imply that such transformation within teacher education is without opponents, or that critical race theorists and other scholars feel the change would be simple.

A broadened dialogue is what we seek. Given the potential of good multicultural children's literature for fostering awareness of and empathy toward other perspectives, we invite early childhood professionals to begin bringing critical race theory and related ideas into the discourse about that literature and its role in the lives of young children. Such discourse can be extended into dialogue about teacher preparation and the foundations on which early childhood professional preparation rests.

As teacher educators, we recommend sharing with preservice teachers a message regarding their responsibility to "tell the truth" about human beings. We have reminded our students that they would not knowingly share literature with children that gave them false information about science or math, because it would damage children's understanding of the world. They are also called upon not to condone false or misleading information about groups of people in the literature they share. In fact, just as with science and math, they have an obligation to actively present the alternative: accurate, authentic images of all the people of the world. This practice is in the best interests of all their students--those who grow up "in the mainstream" of U.S. society and those from groups that have been marginalized.

Individual teachers and teacher educators need not wait for institution-wide support. They can begin now to read against the grain, and to make use of resources that can help to facilitate understanding of race and privilege in society. It cannot be assumed that only European Americans need to develop this awareness. Cross-cultural understanding is essential; individuals in any segment of society can be ill-informed, or well-informed, about any other group. New awareness can have an impact on the literature educators choose and the ways they share it with young children.

Embracing this awareness, they can approach children's literature in early childhood settings with determined optimism: "I don't recognize all the pitfalls yet, but I am awake to the possibilities of using this literature in early childhood settings. I don't always know what to look and listen for now, but I will find out. Now I know where to look, and I know how to look closely. Then I will make choices based on what I see and hear, for the good of all the children whose lives I touch."

Appendix I

Memo on Chief Seattle's "Ecology Speech"

To: Requestors of Chief Seattle's "Ecology" Speech

From: Washington/Northwest Collections, Washington State Library

The speech given by Chief Seattle in January of 1854 is the subject of a great deal of historical debate. The most important fact to note is that there is NO VERBATIM TRANSCRIPT IN EXISTENCE. All known texts are second-hand.

Version 1 appeared in the Seattle Sunday Star on Oct. 29, 1887, in a column by Dr. Henry A. Smith. He makes it very clear that his version is not an exact copy, but rather the best he could put together from notes taken at the time. There is an undecided historical argument on which native dialect the Chief would have used, Duwamish or Suquamish. Either way all agree the speech was translated into the Chinook Jargon on the he spot, since Chief Seattle never learned to speak English.

Version 2 was written by poet William Arrowsmith in the late 1960s. This was an attempt to put the text into more current speech patterns, rather than Dr. Smith's more flowery Victorian style. Except for this modernization, it is very similar to Version 1.

Version 3 is perhaps the most widely known of all. This version was written by Texas professor Ted Perry as part of a film script. The makers of the film took a little literary license, further changing the speech and making it into a letter to President Franklin Pierce, which has been frequently reprinted. No such letter was ever written by or for Chief Seattle.

Version 4 appeared in an exhibit at Expo '74 in Spokane, Washington, and is a shortened edition of Dr. Perry's script (Version 3).

Whatever version you read, the expressions in the speech are certainly uplifting. However, it's clear from this colored past that there is still some doubt as to the authenticity of Chief Seattle's original words. Anyone using the speech should keep this in mind.

The best description of the saga of Chief Seattle's speech can be found in an essay by Rudolf Kaiser: "Chief Seattle's Speech(es): American Origins and European Reception," published in Recovering the Word: Essays on Native American Literature by the University of California Press, 1987. Another excellent discussion appears in David Buerge's article "Seattle's King Arthur: How Chief Seattle Ccontinues to Inspire His Many Admirers to Put Words in His Mouth," appearing in the July 17, 1991, Seattle Weekly.

Appendix II

Problematic Children's Books

A Day's Work by Eve Bunting. Illustrated by Ronald Himler. Clarion Books, 1994.

Arrow to the Sun by Gerald McDermott. Viking Press, 1974.

Brother Eagle, Sister Sky by Susan Jeffers. Dial, 1991.

Knots on a Counting Rope by Bill Martin, Jr. & John Archambault. Illustrated by Ted Rand. Henry Holt, 1987.

Appendix III

Recommended Children's Books

A Gift from Papa Diego by Benjamin Alire Saenz. Illustrated by Geronimo Garcia. Cinco Puntos Press, 1998. The Good Luck Cat by Joy Harjo. Illustrated by Paul Lee. Harcourt Brace, 2000.

Jingle Dancer by Cynthia Smith. Illustrated by Cornelius Van Wright and Ying-Hwa Hu. Morrow Junior Books, 2000.

A River Lost by Lynn Bragg. Illustrated by Virgil Marchand. Hancock House Publishers, 1996.

Acknowledgments

A version of this paper was presented at a symposium honoring Lilian Katz in Champaign, Illinois, November 5-7, 2000. Portions of this paper were taken from Debbie Reese's 2001 doctoral dissertation, Native Americans in Picture Books Recommended for Early Childhood Classrooms, 1945-1999, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

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Jean Paine Mendoza is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Of European American descent, Jean has been in the early childhood field for more than 25 years, in child care, preschool, kindergarten, first grade, parent education, and teacher education. She has taught children's literature and social studies in the teacher education program at the University of Illinois. Her current research focuses on motivation and the use of phototechnology in elementary classrooms.

Jean Mendoza

College of Education

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

1310 S. Sixth St.

Champaign, IL 61820

Email: [e-mail]

Debbie Reese is a visiting lecturer in children's literature at the University of Illinois Graduate School of Information and Library Science in Urbana-Champaign. She has taught children's literature to students in the teacher education program at the University of Illinois, College of Education. A former elementary school teacher, the focus of her research is representations of Native Americans in children's books. She has published numerous articles and book chapters on that topic. Reese is Pueblo Indian, from Nambe Pueblo in northern New Mexico.

Debbie Reese, Visiting Lecturer

Graduate School of Library and Information Science

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

501 E. Daniel St.

Champaign, IL 61820

Email: [e-mail]

This article has been accessed 64,218 times through April 1, 2005.

Una inspeccion de libros ilustrados multiculturales para los programas de la ninez temprana: Posibilidades y peligros

Jean Mendoza y Debbie Reese Universidad de Illinois en Urbana-Champaign

Resumen

Los libros ilustrados para ninos tienen un lugar cada vez mas importante en los programas de la ninez temprana. Los libros ilustrados que retratan la variedad de grupos etnicos, raciales y culturales dentro de la sociedad de los EE.UU. (conocidos por lo general como libros ilustrados multiculturales) permiten a los ninos pequenos desarrollar su entendimiento acerca de otras personas, a la vez que afirman a ninos de diversos antecedentes. Este articulo discute las posibilidades y los peligros implicados en la seleccion de la literatura multicultural para el uso preescolar, examina dos libros de protagonistas mexicano-americanos para iluminar cuestiones y problemas en las imagenes que los libros presentan de los mexicano-americanos, discute unas teorias contemporaneas sobre la raza en funcion de modos de entender tales cuestiones y problemas y considera ciertas posibilidades de accion para los educadores de la ninez temprana y los programas de formacion docente.

Introduccion

Los libros ilustrados para ninos tienen un lugar cada vez mas importante en los programas de la ninez temprana en los Estados Unidos. La ficcion, la poesia y las obras no ficticias ofrecen a los ninos pequenos una multitud de oportunidades de informarse, familiarizarse con la palabra impresa, entretenerse y experimentar puntos de vista ajenos. Los libros ilustrados que retratan la variedad de grupos etnicos, raciales y culturales dentro de la sociedad de los Estados Unidos (conocidos aquellos por lo general como libros ilustrados multiculturales) permiten a los ninos pequenos desarrollar su entendimiento acerca de otras personas, a la vez que afirman a ninos de diversos antecedentes. En este articulo, (1) discutiremos las posibilidades, que percibimos como positivas, y los peligros implicados en la eleccion de literatura multicultural para el uso con los ninos pequenos; (2) examinaremos dos libros con protagonistas mexicano-americanos para iluminar cuestiones y problematicas en las imagenes que los libros presentan de los mexicano-americanos; (3) discutiremos unas ideas contemporaneas sobre la raza como una manera de examinar las posibilidades y los peligros de escoger los libros ilustrados multiculturales; y (4) pediremos mas dialogo y accion de parte de los educadores de la ninez temprana y los programas de formacion docente con respecto a la raza, la literatura infantil y los ninos pequenos.

La literatura infantil y la educacion en la ninez temprana

El papel creciente de la literatura infantil en las vidas de ninos pequenos tiene como evidencia los numeros de libros publicados por ano. En 1940, se publicaron 984 libros para ninos en los Estados Unidos. En 1997, se produjeron 5.353 de tales libros (Huck, Hepler, Hickman, & Kiefer, 2001). En un estudio de libros ilustrados resenados o recomendados en Young Children (la revista profesional de la National Association for the Education of Young Children [Asociacion Nacional para la Educacion de Ninos Pequenos]), Reese (2001) hallo un aumento parecido. Durante los 9 anos de 1945 a 1954, se recomendaron 37 libros para ninos, mientras que 904 se recomendaron entre 1990 y 1999. Este aumento refleja una conciencia creciente de las posibles contribuciones de la literatura infantil a los programas de la ninez temprana.

Los usos de la literatura infantil: Estetico, psico-social e instructivo

La literatura infantil puede servir varios propositos, abarcando estos el estetico, el psico-social y el informativo/instructivo.

Rosenblatt (1995) clasifica la participacion del lector en un texto segun un espectro continuo. En un confin se halla la lectura estetica, en la que el lector se siente atraido al cuento y participa por medio de la identificacion con los personajes. El objetivo principal es el de placer y entretenimiento. En otro confin del continuo se halla la lectura eferente, en la que el lector tiene su interes principal en obtener informacion. Al relacionarse con los libros, los ninos pequenos pueden funcionar en todas partes del continuo de Rosenblatt, utilizando los libros tanto para gozar como para aprender.

Tambien se ve que la literatura tiene varios usos psico-sociales para los ninos pequenos. Por lo general, se dice que la literatura proporciona personajes y eventos con los cuales los ninos pueden identificarse y mediante los cuales pueden considerar sus propias acciones, creencias y emociones. Los personajes y las situaciones contenidos en los libros presentan a los ninos una perspectiva posible del mundo con ojos ajenos y ofrecen la oportunidad de construir mas extensamente sus propios puntos de vista de si mismos y del mundo. Una caracteristica importante de la literatura infantil de alta calidad, segun senalan Temple, Martinez, Yokota y Naylor (1998), es el grado de "decir la verdad" sobre la experiencia humana. "Ademas, los personajes [...] son verosimiles y los entendimientos sobre el mundo que los libros ofrecen son acertados, quizas hasta sabios" (p. 10). Alison Lurie y otros sostienen que estas observaciones tal vez no siempre sean lo que los adultos quieran que los ninos entiendan. De hecho, la literatura infantil con frecuencia puede ser "subversiva," y celebrar "el sonar despierto, desobedecer, replicar, huir de la casa y esconder los sentimientos y pensamientos intimos de los adultos antipaticos" (Lurie, 1990). A veces se percibe que la literatura tradicional en particular, como las leyendas y los cuentos de hadas, tiene cierta resonancia con preocupaciones psicologicas de la ninez comunes a muchas culturas (Bettelheim, 1977) como el abuso, el abandono y la transicion a la edad adulta.

Tambien se percibe que la literatura tradicional tiene un proposito didactico o lo tenia en su forma original. Se dice que los mitos, las sagas y otras formas de tradiciones orales servian de vehiculos mediante los cuales cualquier sociedad transmitiria el conocimiento, las ideas y las amonestaciones a sus hijos, estando ausente un sistema de escritura. Los estudios feministas han reinterpretado muchos cuentos de hadas europeos como un modo de comunicar los modelos culturales para las mujeres jovenes (Rowe, 1986; Lieberman, 1986). Los educadores contemporaneos en los Estados Unidos a veces utilizan la literatura tradicional como una ventana a otras culturas, pero se percibe que esta practica es problematica (Hearne, 1993; Zipes, 1986). Los libros no ficticios o informativos tienen los propositos didacticos declarados: el de fomentar un interes en buscar informacion y participar en el mundo (McElmeel, 1995) o de informar, instruir e ilustrar (Freedman, 1992). Se espera que la literatura no ficticia haga distinciones claras entre los hechos, las teorias y las opiniones. El contenido cientifico, matematico e historico tiene que ser acertado, verificable y corriente; y hay que evitar los estereotipos (Elleman, 1992). Un numero creciente de libros informativos se escribe e ilustra de tal manera que ofrecen experiencias tanto esteticas como educativas.

Algunos criticos, educadores, bibliotecarios y otros que trabajan con los ninos y su literatura declaran que la literatura (a menos que sea la no-ficticia) es arte y no tiene por que preocuparse demasiado en ser verificable. Otros, que perciben la interaccion con la literatura como un factor potencialmente poderoso en la construccion del conocimiento de los ninos acerca de la gente y el mundo, sostienen que ciertos tipos de ficcion deben atenerse a ciertas normas de exactitud y autenticidad parecidas a las de los libros informativos. De acuerdo con esta preocupacion, algunos redactores han reimpreso libros clasicos para ninos como Dr. Doolittle de Hugh Lofting y Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Charlie y la fabrica de chocolate) de Roald Dahl, habiendo cambiado o quitado representaciones racistas de africanos. El interes por la exactitud y la autenticidad motivo a Betsy Hearne (1993) a desarrollar una escala para evaluar las notas de fuentes literarias en los libros de literatura tradicional; la nota ideal de fuentes contiene informacion explicita sobre el origen de un cuento. La ficcion historica en particular es motivo de desacuerdos intensos sobre el grado de responsabilidad de los escritores por mantener la exactitud historica y cultural (para ejemplos, vease Col, 1995; Reese et al., 2001).

Una de las razones mas persuasivas para compartir la literatura con los ninos pequenos es la idea que al hacerlo se beneficia el desarrollo de la linguistica y la alfabetizacion. Por muchos anos, los investigadores, educadores de docentes y de padres y los padres mismos han reconocido el valor de leer a los ninos, y numerosos estudios documentan los efectos beneficos de leer a los ninos preescolares (Scarborough y Dobrich, 1994). Por ejemplo, en el estudio correlativo de Wells (1985) sobre los efectos de leer libros ilustrados, se hallo que la frecuencia de escuchar cuentos entre las edades de 1 y 3 anos tenia una asociacion significativa con la alfabetizacion y las habilidades de lenguaje oral medidas a la edad de 5 anos por los maestros de los ninos. Los libros de texto para futuros educadores suelen incluir declaraciones como "Leer en voz alta a los ninos es una de las maneras mas utiles de familiarizarlos con la accion de leer" (Krogh, 1994, p. 410).

El termino "alfabetizacion emergente" empezo a oirse al comienzo de la decada del 80, como resultado de los esfuerzos de investigadores por formar nuevos conceptos sobre lo que los ninos pequenos sabian de lectura, escritura y palabra impresa antes de comenzar la educacion formal. Los ninos tan pequenos como de 1 y 2 anos de edad estan en el proceso de alfabetizacion (Sulzby y Teale, 1991), y se dice que el periodo de alfabetizacion emergente continua hasta que los ninos empiezan a leer y escribir convencionalmente. Este proceso puede tener lugar en el hogar o en situaciones comunitarias, el cuidado infantil, Head Start, programas pre-kindergarten o el kindergarten formal. El concepto de alfabetizacion emergente pone al nino en el papel de "constructor/a de su propia alfabetizacion" (Sulzby y Teale, 1991). Los ninos crean el significado basado en simbolos ambientales como los arcos de oro de McDonald's (Goodman, 1987), ademas de las ilustraciones y la palabra impresa convencional que se hallan en los libros.

El reconocimiento y aprecio contemporaneos por la alfabetizacion emergente del nino es tal que Saracho y Spodek declaran, "Todo maestro de la ninez temprana, en todo nivel, ya tiene que considerarse maestro de la lectura, aunque no ofrezca instruccion formal en la lectura" (p. xi).

Los libros ilustrados para ninos pequenos

Los libros ilustrados forman el genero mas popular para compartir con los ninos pequenos, ya sea si los maestros los leen en voz alta o si los ninos los utilizan independientemente. Los libros ilustrados cruzan las fronteras de genero y tambien podrian considerarse literatura ficticia, de poesia, informativa o tradicional. En un libro de texto frecuentemente utilizado en programas para maestros no graduados en entrenamiento, Temple, Martinez, Yokota y Naylor (1998) identifican tres tipos de libros ilustrados: (1) libros sin palabras, valiendose solamente de laminas para contar un cuento; (2) libros ilustrados de cuentos, en los que las laminas y el texto colaboran para contar el cuento; y (3) libros ilustrados, en los que el texto provee la mayoria de la informacion pero las ilustraciones aumentan el texto o sirven de decoracion (p. 171).

Las palabras y las ilustraciones no solamente cuentan cuentos. Juntas en libros ilustrados, tambien crean imagenes potencialmente poderosas de seres humanos. (Vease la comparacion de Zipes [1986] de las ilustraciones de "Little Red Riding Hood [Caperucita Roja].) El nino ve en las ilustraciones representaciones de personas-varones y mujeres, adultos y ninos-que fomentan ideas acerca del tipo de persona que se esta describiendo (Lukens, 1990). En cierto sentido, entonces, cualquier libro ilustrado donde haya personas puede tener resultados didacticos, aun si la ensenanza no fuera la intencion del libro.

La literatura multicultural para ninos

Al compartir los libros con los ninos pequenos, los maestros ofrecen, entre otras cosas, la oportunidad de aprender ciertas maneras de pensar acerca de otros seres humanos. Para el nino, las ilustraciones y el texto se combinan para crear puntos de vista especificos tanto sobre individuos como sobre grupos de personas-con mensajes sobre los modos de ser de esas personas.

Antes de la decada del 60, las personas que no eran europeas ni europeo-americanas eran casi invisibles en la literatura infantil o se retrataban en representaciones negativas o estereotipicas, o ambos (Aoki, 1993; Nieto, 1997)-tendencia que Harris (1993a) describe como "perniciosa" (p. 60). Esta invisibilidad fue objeto de atencion a nivel nacional en 1965 cuando el Saturday Review publico un articulo de la bibliotecaria Nancy Larrick, titulado "The All-White World of Children's Books" ("El mundo completamente blanco de los libros para ninos").

Los cambios socioculturales durante las decadas del 60 y 70 fomentaron el interes renovado en la literatura para adultos y para ninos que reflejaba "las diversas experiencias de la vida, tradiciones, historias, puntos de vista sobre el mundo y perspectivas de grupos culturales diversos que componen una sociedad (Grant y Ladson-Billings, 1997, p. 185)-en otras palabras, "la literatura multicultural." Taxel (1995) describe una tendencia a enfocarse en "los intereses, las preocupaciones y las experiencias de individuos y grupos a quienes se consideran fuera de la mayoria sociopolitica y cultural de la sociedad estadounidense" (p. 155). En el principio, eran los europeo-americanos los unicos productores de las imagenes nuevas sobre las personas que no eran de la mayoria etnica. Mediante los esfuerzos de individuos y grupos como el Council on Interracial Books for Children (Concilio sobre los Libros Interraciales para Ninos) (MacCann, 2001), esta situacion cambiaria gradualmente-algunos dirian glacialmente-en las cuatro decadas siguientes. Aunque no siempre es facil, hoy se pueden encontrar libros ilustrados para ninos, redactados o ilustrados, o ambos, por escritores africano-americanos, asiatico-americanos, estadounidenses de herencia latina y americano-indigenas. Tambien ha aumentado el interes en los libros para ninos que representan de manera acertada y respetuosa a personas homosexuales, mujeres, gente con discapacidades y religiones diferentes del cristianismo. Una proporcion significativa de tales libros es publicada por prensas pequenas y enfrenta dificultades para el uso masivo, las cuales se mencionaran mas abajo. Sin embargo, los criticos perciben que la situacion todavia se puede mejorar.

Sims Bishop (1997) percibe un papel doble en la literatura multicultural para ninos; puede servir de ventana o de espejo. Un nino puede ver reflejada su propia vida en un libro o puede tener la oportunidad de ver la vida de otra persona. En la historia reciente, los libros para ninos han ofrecido a los ninos europeo-americanos de clase media y alta el espejo pero no la ventana. Podian observarse a si mismos en los cuentos que escuchaban y leian, pero era poco probable que vieran a personas con antecedentes distintos de los suyos. A la inversa, los ninos que no eran de la mayoria cultural han tenido pocos espejos literarios que afirmaran sus identidades, aunque tenian abundancia de ventanas hacia la vida de la cultura dominante de los Estados Unidos.

La buena literatura multicultural puede beneficiar a todos los ninos en los programas de la ninez temprana. Los maestros mejoran la empatia y el entendimiento que los ninos van desarrollando al hacer hincapie en compartir libros que representan de manera acertada y positiva los antecedentes de las familias de su clase y que extienden la conciencia de los ninos a los grupos notables en su comunidad y en el mundo en general (Derman-Sparks et al., 1989, p. 12).

La critica literaria y la literatura multicultural infantil

En Playing in the Dark (Jugar a Oscuras), Toni Morrison (1990) emprende una investigacion a fondo de la presencia y ausencia de imagenes de africanos y africano-americanos en el catalogo de la literatura estadounidense para adultos. Se ha desarrollado un conjunto de literatura critica relacionada que examina la literatura infantil y el prejuicio, los estereotipos y otra informacion erronea. Taxel (1995) y otros dan por esencial tal critica de libros infantiles "en vista de la complicidad de la literatura infantil, junto con el resto del aparato social, en otorgar legitimidad a la injusticia y la opresion relacionadas con la raza y el genero sexual [...]" (p. 163).

Estas criticas muchas veces se dirigen a los libros infantiles de renombre-incluso algunos que han ganado premios prestigiosos-para iluminar sus observaciones sobre el eurocentrismo y problemas relacionados (Atleo et al., 1999; Moore y Hirschfelder, 1999; Slapin y Seale, 1998; Kohl, 1995). Utilizando fuentes primarias de informacion historica y cultural, actuan como portavoces de puntos de vista rara vez escuchados en el mundo de la literatura infantil. Plantean cuestiones de exactitud y autenticidad, poniendo en duda las perspectivas, y a veces los motivos, de autores e ilustradores europeo-americanos que cuentan cuentos acerca de, o por parte de, los grupos marginados. Tambien se esfuerzan por iluminar al publico sobre la literatura que ofrece la informacion exacta y las perspectivas autenticas de personas de dichos grupos.

Frecuentemente tal critica se halla fuera de las revistas de renombre. De hecho, las revistas quiza sean reacias a incluir las resenas que presentan lo que ellos perciben como critica "no-literaria" (por ej. politica) (Reese, 2000). En contraste, tales revistas como Multicultural Journal, The New Advocate y Multicultural Review son propensas a considerar la exactitud y autenticidad tanto culturales como historicas de los libros que resenan. Varios libros de texto (Harris, 1993b; Leer, 1995) de inclinacion critica parecida se destinan a los futuros educadores.

Peligros comunes en la seleccion de libros multiculturales para ninos

Libros populares pero problematicos: el primer peligro

La disponibilidad limitada de critica sobre la exactitud, autenticidad y problemas relacionados ocasiona con frecuencia un gran peligro para los maestros que buscan libros multiculturales. Los maestros a veces caen en la suposicion no examinada que un libro es multicultural y vale la pena si trata temas o personajes no europeo-americanos y si recibe las alabanzas de la critica en las revistas de renombre. Por ejemplo, las eruditas americano-indigenas Reese y Caldwell-Wood (1997) hallaron varios problemas al examinar unos libros ilustrados populares escritos e ilustrados por europeo-americanos en los que las personas o los temas americano-indigenas tomaban un papel central. Ellas notaron que en estos libros, los textos y las ilustraciones presentaban un conjunto de imagenes de americano-indigenas, y de ahi una manera particular de pensar sobre ellos, que era inexacta y potencialmente enganosa. Estos libros en particular recibieron las resenas halaguenas en Horn Book y otros periodicos de renombre y han gozado de muchos anos de popularidad.

Uno de tales libro es Brother Eagle, Sister Sky (Hermano Cielo, Hermana Aguila), que ha ganado varios premios. Fue ilustrado por Susan Jeffers, ilustradora europeo-americana contemporanea, y el texto se atribuye a Seattle, un lider del siglo XIX de los pueblos Suquamish y Duwamish de la costa Pacifica de Norteamerica, conocido entre sus pueblos por el nombre Sealth. En 1992, este libro se hallo entre los libros de mayores ventas en los Estados Unidos-logro bien raro para un libro infantil. Su mensaje fuerte de conciencia medioambiental parece ser la base de su continua popularidad. Sin embargo, los criticos americano-indigenas han identificado problemas significativos con el texto y las ilustraciones (Seale, n.d.; Reese y Caldwell-Wood, 1997).

El texto de Brother Eagle, Sister Sky tiene un historial interesante. Segun indica un memorando de la oficina Washington/Northwest Collections (Oficina de Colecciones de Washington/Noroeste) de la Washington State Library (Biblioteca Estatal de Washington) (vease Apendice I), por lo menos cuatro versiones del discurso atribuido a Seattle han aparecido a lo largo de la historia. En enero de 1854, Seattle dio un discurso extenso durante las negociaciones entre los Suquamish, los Duwamish y el gobierno estadounidense. Los historiadores concuerdan en que el discurso se tradujo a la jerga Chinook en el acto, ya que Seattle no hablaba el ingles. La primera version impresa de su discurso se publico recien el 29 de octubre de 1887, en un articulo en el periodico Seattle Sunday Star por el Dr. Henry A. Smith, un testigo del discurso de 1854 que habia reconstruido y traducido el discurso de sus notas. En los ultimos anos de la decada del 1960, el poeta William Arrowsmith escribio el discurso de nuevo en un estilo que era un tanto mas contemporaneo, aunque todavia conservaba similitudes con la version de Smith (Ellen Levesque, comunicacion personal, 29 de septiembre de 1993).

Mas tarde aun, Ted Perry creo otra version para "Home" (Hogar), un programa historico sobre el bosque lluvioso del noroeste que fue televisado en 1971 (Jones y Sawhill, 1992). Esta version fue construida como si fuera una carta al Presidente Franklin Pierce, aunque "nunca fue escrita ninguna carta de esa indole ni por ni para el Jefe Seattle" (Ellen Levesque, comunicacion personal, 29 de septiembre, 1993). Una version abreviada de la "carta" se exhibio en el Expo '74 en Spokane, Washington.

Al fin de Brother Eagle, Sister Sky, Susan Jeffers escribe, "Los origenes de las palabras del Jefe Seattle se ven parcialmente ocultos por las neblinas de los anos." Ella menciona la version de Smith y declara que ha adaptado el mensaje, igual que Joseph Campbell y otros a quienes no nombro. Los lectores y oyentes quedan con la impresion de que el libro ofrece tal vez una version resumida del discurso verdadero. El Sitio Web de la tribu Suquamish (http://www.suquamish.nsn.us/) reproduce la version de 1887, que trata con emociones profundas el estado de las relaciones entre los nativos y los blancos en aquel lugar y tiempo. En el discurso, Seattle concuerda, aunque reacio y tal vez con cierto grado de colera, que el y su pueblo se mudaran a una reservacion, con la condicion de que se les permita visitar las tumbas de sus antepasados sin ser molestados. La responsabilidad hacia el medioambiente no parece ser el tema.

En algun momento despues de la primera tirada o edicion, las copias de Brother Eagle, Sister Sky empezaron a llevar sobrecubiertas que contenian una declaracion de Jewell Praying Wolf James, "sobrino directo del Jefe Seattle," donde senalaba que "[...] En Brother Eagle, Sister Sky, las palabras del Jefe Seattle se han trasformado en una experiencia que pueden utilizar los ninos de toda edad y localidad [...]."

La trasformacion de las palabras de Seattle en el libro ejemplifica un problema frecuentemente identificado por eruditos, criticos y activistas americano-indigenas: la apropiacion de voces indigenas por escritores no indigenas. Los varios europeo-americanos, incluso Jeffers, que han pretendido actuar como canales para transmitir las palabras de Seattle realmente han cambiado considerablemente el mensaje original. Por valioso y sincero que sea el mensaje sobre el medioambiente, y a pesar del apoyo aparente del descendiente de Seattle, Brother Eagle, Sister Sky se percibe como un ejemplo de la ocultacion de las palabras de personas indigenas mediante la apropiacion.

Los criticos indigenas tambien notan problemas con las ilustraciones en Brother Eagle, Sister Sky. Contando las de la cubierta y la ultima pagina hay 16 pinturas. Los caballos tienen un lugar de prominencia en 8 de estas. Seattle mismo no era de una cultura de caballos. La tierra natal de los Suquamish y Duwamish es la costa noroeste de los Estados Unidos y su ropa, casas y medios de transporte tradicionales reflejan esa localidad.

Las ilustraciones de Jeffers, no obstante, frecuentemente representan las culturas de los llanos de Norteamerica. Las sobrecubiertas actuales contienen una cita de Jeffers: "Mi objetivo [...] era el de representar a personas y artefactos de una gama amplia de naciones porque la filosofia comunicada en el texto es compartida por la mayoria de los americano-indigenas." No obstante, sin una nota en el texto que explique cuales culturas se retratan en cada pintura, los lectores jovenes no tienen ningun modo de saber que el pueblo de Seattle no usaba tocados grandes de plumas ni cuero de ante con flecos, ni vivian en carpas o tiendas indias, ni pasaban mucho tiempo montando caballos. De ahi que se refuercen los estereotipos antiguos sobre el atuendo y los modos de vida indigenas (Reese y Caldwell-Wood, 1997).

Ademas, varias ilustraciones, incluso la cubierta, retratan a las personas americano-indigenas como figuras parcialmente transparentes, como espiritus de los muertos. En contraste, el nino de ojos azules en la cubierta se ve solido y parece vivo, igual que un grupo de personas que parecen ser una familia europeo-americana moderna, al final del libro. Junto al hecho de que todas las personas americano-indigenas se retratan con la ropa tradicional historica mas bien que la contemporanea, esta representacion sugiere que los americano-indigenas, a diferencia de los europeo-americanos, ya no existen como un pueblo vital. Se han desvanecido y existen solo como memorias o espiritus. De ahi que se perciba que Brother Eagle, Sister Sky no solo carece de exactitud historica al atribuir su texto al Jefe Seattle; tambien perpetua estereotipos visuales comunes de los americano-indigenas.

Reese y Caldwell-Wood tambien critican la autenticidad de Arrow to the Sun (Flecha al sol) por Gerald McDermott (1978) y Knots on a Counting Rope (Nudos en una soga para contar) por Bill Martin y John Archambault (1987), ilustrado por Ted Rand. No son los unicos criticos (Slapin y Seale, 1988). En Arrow to the Sun, el autor/artista Gerald McDermott representa equivocadamente la vida social, las creencias religiosas y las practicas ceremoniales de Pueblo (Reese y Caldwell-Wood, 1997). Para la comunidad Pueblo, las kivas son lugares de ceremonias e instruccion, no de prueba; pero en Arrow to the Sun, el protagonista pasa por una serie de pruebas en las kivas. De esta manera los lectores tal vez queden mal informados sobre las creencias de Pueblo. Ademas, Perry Nodelman (1988), que no es particularmente critico del libro, anota que el uso de McDermott de la linea, la forma y el color difieren de maneras importantes del arte autentico de las kivas de Pueblo (pp. 94-95). Esta reformacion del arte tradicional es fascinante en un sentido visual (gano la Medalla Caldecott), pero fracasa en reflejar la realidad del diseno y de las creencias religiosas de Pueblo (Reese y Caldwell-Wood, 1997, p. 175).

En Knots on a Counting Rope, las ilustraciones de Ted Rand sugieren primariamente que el cuento sucede en la nacion Navajo, pero sus obras representan una mezcla de la cultura material de varias naciones distintas. Por ejemplo, los hombres Navajos tradicionales en el cuento se retratan con peinados tipicos de las naciones Atsina, Blackfeet, Mandan y Piegan. Ademas, se representan a personas de Pueblo en una carrera de caballos trayendo ropa tradicional ceremonial que seria inapropiada para tal ocasion (Reese y Caldwell-Wood, 1997, p. 177). Muchos lectores no tienen ninguna manera de saber como identificar tales problemas y quedan con la informacion equivocada sobre varias culturas indigenas, a la vez que los lectores americano-indigenas de esas culturas se enfrentan a la incomodidad de ser representados equivocadamente.

Las respuestas de los criticos americano-indigenas a estos tres libros sugieren que ni las alabanzas de los criticos ni las representaciones de culturas no europeo-americanas pueden garantizar que un libro sea buena literatura multicultural. Descartando lo fascinante que sean los cuentos, o lo importante que sean sus temas, las inexactitudes-por sutiles que sean-pueden contribuir a malentendidos culturales y a posibles incomodidades para ninos cuyas culturas son retratadas inexactamente. De ahi que tanto el espejo como la ventana se distorsionen.

Dos peligros mas al elegir libros multiculturales para ninos

Los observadores de clases de la ninez temprana se han fijado en otros dos problemas que ocurren con frecuencia cuando los educadores buscan libros ilustrados multiculturales. Uno es la suposicion de que un unico libro sobre un grupo es adecuado para retratar la experiencia de dicho grupo. Se ve esta situacion, por ejemplo, en una clase cuya observancia del Mes de la Historia Africano-Americana comienza y termina con la lectura en voz alta de un libro acerca del Dr. Martin Luther King.

El otro peligro es la creencia equivocada que facilmente se puede encontrar una gama amplia de literatura multicultural de alta calidad en bibliotecas y librerias, de modo que solo se tiene que visitar uno de estos lugares para hallar representaciones autenticas y acertadas de grupos no mayoritarios. Tales libros existen y su numero esta aumentando, pero su disponibilidad no es tan amplia como se podria esperar.

El siguiente analisis de dos libros ilustrados acerca de mexicano-americanos conduce a una discusion de ambos peligros.

Libros ilustrados que representan a mexicano-americanos: informacion a fondo

Despues del censo estadounidense de 1990, se identifico a los mexicano-americanos como el grupo etno-linguistico de crecimiento mas rapido en los Estados Unidos. En aquel momento, constituian el 5% de la poblacion entera del pais y el 60% de la gente de origen hispano en los EE.UU. (Barrera, Liguori y Salas, 1993, p. 207). Sin embargo, estas cifras no se ven reflejadas en el numero de libros infantiles que representan a personas mexicano-americanas. Segun indica un estudio por Barrera y Garza de Cortes (1997), el promedio anual de libros infantiles mexicano-americanos ha aumentado de aproximadamente 6 entre 1940 y 1973 a 19 en el periodo entre 1992 y 1995 (pp. 129-130).

En las dos secciones siguientes, consideraremos dos libros ilustrados cuyos protagonistas son mexicano-americanos: A Day's Work (El trabajo de un dia) por Eve Bunting (1994), ilustrado por Ronald Himler, y A Gift from Papa Diego (Un regalo de Papa Diego) por Benjamin Alire Saenz (1998), ilustrado por Geronimo Garcia. Para cada libro, resumimos la trama y examinamos la relacion entre el texto y las ilustraciones para descubrir que ofrece cada libro a los ninos en funcion de espejo o ventana sobre la experiencia mexicano-americana.

A Day's Work

Al comienzo de A Day's Work, Francisco y su abuelo quedan de pie con otros jornaleros en un estacionamiento, esperando hallar trabajo. Francisco es un nino cuya edad no se especifica, tal vez entre los 8 y los 10 anos. En el segundo parrafo, el nino revela tres hechos a este grupo de desconocidos: primero, que su padre ha muerto, dejando a su familia con problemas economicos; segundo, que su abuelo ha llegado recientemente a los Estados Unidos para ayudarlos; y tercero, que planea utilizar sus propias habilidades con el ingles para ayudar a su abuelo, que habla espanol, a hallar un trabajo.

Sin contarselo a su abuelo, Francisco decide mentir a un posible patron sobre las habilidades de su abuelo como jardinero. El y su abuelo van con prisa al camion del empleador y el nino empuja a otro hombre que intenta subir con ellos. El empleador, Ben, los lleva a una ribera para escardar un cantero y se va en el camion. Los dos trabajan todo el dia bajo el calor del sol. Mientras se estan felicitando uno a otro por haberlo hecho muy bien, Ben vuelve y se siente ultrajado al descubrir que han arrancado todas sus plantas y han dejado la mala hierba. Contra las protestas de Francisco, Abuelo ofrece remendar los danos y quitar la mala hierba sin pago. Ben ve que Abuelo es honrado, les permite volver el otro dia e insinua que tal vez contrate al abuelo como mas que un jornalero. Con la reflexion que "el tambien ha empezado a aprender las cosas importantes" (p. 32), Francisco le toma la mano a su abuelo y lo conduce hacia su casa por una escena dorada de la cuidad.

Las ilustraciones de Himler en acuarela y guache son expresivas y evocativas, con un tipo de gravedad que a veces sugiere amenazas o situaciones sobrecogedoras. En estas ilustraciones, los ninos ven a mexicano-americanos que:

* Esperan trabajo

* Luchan por trabajo

* Mienten para conseguir trabajo

* Empujan a otros para obtener trabajo

* Son llevados al lugar de trabajo

* Trabajan cerca de una zona de casas caras

* Trabajan mucho y cometen un error grave

* Descansan despues de trabajar, inconscientes de que han errado

* Son reganados por un patron

* Se sienten avergonzados, consternados y culpables

* Procuran corregir el error

* Los adultos asumen un papel de liderazgo moral

* Reciben el permiso del patron de corregir su error

* Hacen frente a las consecuencias de sus acciones, ganandose asi el respeto del patron

* Estan en desventaja si no hablan ingles

* En la ninez, median entre adultos que hablan ingles y los que hablan espanol

* Caminan a casa juntos

* Son varones en un mundo laboral de varones

A Day's Work esta escrito enteramente en ingles, con la excepcion de las palabras abuelo, senora, gracias, bueno y dos frases de dos palabras. El texto se refiere a la venida de Abuelo de Mexico, pero no menciona de que parte del pais. Existe una referencia a las tortillas que la madre de Francisco ha puesto en sus almuerzos y al chorizo que el nino quiere comprar con las ganancias de ambos. Abuelo alaba las habilidades de Francisco de hablar ingles. Se ve la inversion de papeles que experimentan muchas familias de inmigrantes, en la que un nino que puede hablar ingles se convierte en un intermediario entre la familia y la cultura dominante (Wong Fillmore, 1991). Tambien se ve al nino tomando el papel central de hallar trabajo, hasta el punto que miente y empuja a un hombre adulto para conseguirlo. Aunque se menciona a la madre de Francisco, los lectores observan y escuchan solo a hombres en esta representacion de los mexicano-americanos-jornaleros trabajadores.

A Gift from Papa Diego

A Gift from Papa Diego cuenta el cuento de Diego, de 6 anos de edad, residente de El Paso, Texas. Ama y se identifica con su abuelo paterno, que vive muy lejos, al otro lado de la frontera en Chihuahua. Este libro es un libro bilingue paralelo: cada pagina contiene el texto, tanto en ingles como en espanol, que desarrolla la trama del cuento. Dieguito vive con sus padres y su hermana mayor, a quien le gusta molestarlo, en una casa con un jardin. Lo que quiere mas que nada es estar con su abuelo en su septimo cumpleanos. Platicando con su padre se entera que es poco probable que consiga ese deseo. Entonces Dieguito ruega por un atuendo de Superman, creyendo que le ayudara a volar a donde Papa Diego. En su cumpleanos, la familia lo despierta con una cancion tradicional y se va a la escuela imaginandose como volara a Chihuahua si recibe ese atuendo como regalo. Esa tarde, se le cumple su deseo por el atuendo, pero se le quebrantan las esperanzas cuando no le ayuda a volar. Se retrae a su cuarto. Cuando su padre le invita a reunirse a la familia, lo hace-y halla a Papa Diego en la cocina. Tienen una reunion gozosa.

Al fin del libro hay una pagina con notas sobre los lugares en el libro, un pequeno glosario de terminos en espanol y una pagina que contiene las biografias del autor y el ilustrador. Las ilustraciones son fotografias de creaciones en tres dimensiones de terracota pintada. El libro tiene un humor alegre y jovial, pero con un sentido solido y sustancial. Los ninos que miran estas paginas observan a mexicano-americanos que:

* Piensan sobre cosas y exploran el mundo

* Tienen conversaciones entre padre e hijo sobre asuntos de familia

* Se abrazan

* Usan corbata para trabajar

* Leen

* Se imaginan cosas y suenan despiertos

* Anhelan cruzar una frontera que los separa de seres queridos

* Platican en familia mientras preparan la comida

* Experimentan la rivalidad entre hermanos

* Tocan la guitarra y le cantan a un ser querido

* Se saludan con carino

* Actuan basandose en una idea equivocada, pero sin hacer dano

* Hacen cosas bondadosas para otras personas

* Como adultos, son fuentes de amor y guia

* Como ninos, juegan, asisten a la escuela y se relacionan con familiares

* Cenan juntos en familia

* Estan en toda etapa de la vida: bebe/nino/padres/abuelos

* Son mujeres, son hombres

* Escriben libros o los ilustran

A Gift from Papa Diego contiene informacion detallada y culturalmente especifica sobre el idioma y las costumbres, tanto dentro del cuento como en el glosario al fin del libro:

* el texto espanol y las frases espanolas entretejidas en el texto ingles,

* la mencion de cuatro platos especificos,

* conversaciones en familia sobre Chihuahua y la frontera EE.UU.-Mexico, y

* la cancion especial para los cumpleanos que canta la familia de Dieguito.

Todos estos rasgos son indicadores culturales que demuestran que de hecho este cuento se trata de una familia mexicano-americana. Tanto los varones como las mujeres tienen roles importantes. El cuento muestra continuamente lo central que es la cultura de esta familia en la vida cotidiana.

A Day's Work integra unas cuantas palabras en espanol y se refiere a dos comidas especificas. No menciona ninguna area de Mexico ni relata costumbres especificas (como la cancion de cumpleanos en Papa Diego). Habla en contra del estereotipo "mexicano perezoso" y ofrece una mirada a los problemas socioeconomicos confrontados frecuentemente por inmigrantes mexicano-americanos, en particular aquellos que no dominan el ingles. Su enfoque principal parece ser la leccion moral sobre la honradez en el contexto del trabajo para sobrevivir.

El segundo peligro: Creer que un solo libro es adecuado

La comparacion de los dos libros demuestra la diferencia que puede hacer una perspectiva interior. El contraste es mas aparente en la forma en que los autores usan el lenguaje. Con el texto en dos idiomas y referencias entretejidas a lo deseable de hablar ambos, Papa Diego abiertamente apoya y hasta invita a la habilidad bilingue. En A Day's Work, se alaba a Francisco por sus habilidades de hablar ingles, y Abuelo "todavia no habla el ingles" [letra bastardilla anadida]. Ninguno de los patrones, Ben inclusive, parece saber nada de espanol. Las habilidades de hablar espanol se presentan como careciendo de importancia o hasta innecesarias. De hecho, se implica que el no saber ingles es la raiz, por asi decirlo, de los problemas que tienen Francisco y su abuelo. Abuelo no puede discernir que Francisco ha mentido para persuadir a Ben a contratarlos, ni puede comunicarse con Ben sobre el trabajo de jardineria. Esta completamente dependiente de su nieto para negociar estas transacciones. La representacion de Bunting de los aprietos de Abuelo encaja dentro del discurso politico sobre idiomas en los Estados Unidos, fuera esta su intencion o no.

A Day's Work es un cuento de moralidad con conciencia social, presentado como un relato acerca de un nino y su abuelo. Cada resena de importancia sobre A Day's Work recalca la leccion moral sobre las mentiras y el hacer reparaciones despues de crear un problema. Los maestros reportan que utilizan el libro especificamente para generar las discusiones sobre la honradez. Bunting es reconocida por sus representaciones de personas, en particular personas de color, que viven en la pobreza; parece probable que en A Day's Work haya tenido la intencion de declarar su opinion (se puede sostener que es positiva) sobre los mexicano-americanos en la sociedad estadounidense. A Gift from Papa Diego, por otra parte, es un cuento acerca de un nino y su abuelo-un cuento sobre el amor y la devocion familiar. Su retrato de la experiencia mexicano-americana es tanto complejo como positivo.

Mientras ensenabamos un curso en literatura infantil, mantuvimos una conversacion con una estudiante latina que protesto contra A Day's Work. Ella opino que la perspectiva exterior del libro resultaba en imagenes que alimentaban el estereotipo de los hombres mexicano-americanos como obreros de trabajos manuales. Aunque el libro aparece comprensivo, aun los presenta como poco inteligentes. El hecho de que no pudieran distinguir entre una mala hierba y una planta deseable, ella senalo, hizo parecer como tontos a Francisco y a su abuelo de manera innecesaria e irrealista. Ella afirmo que un nino mexicano-americano que leyera o escuchara este libro probablemente se sentiria abochornado. No le impresiono el que A Day's Work hubiera sido nombrado "A 1994 Americas Commended Title" (Titulo Recomendado Americas) por el Consortium of Latin American Studies Programs (Consorcio de Programas de Estudios Latinoamericanos). Mas bien, ella decidio que los problemas sobrepasaban cualquier merito que tuviera el libro y que por eso utilizaria otros libros en su clase (A. Herrera, comunicacion personal, 23 de marzo, 2000). Si se esta de acuerdo o no con el rechazo de esta futura maestra de A Day's Work, su respuesta demuestra un conocimiento de topicos criticos y un compromiso a proporcionar autenticidad y exactitud.

Ella tambien evita el peligro de dar por sentado que un solo libro pudiera retratar adecuadamente la experiencia de cualquier grupo. No proponemos que Papa Diego solamente sea adecuado para representar a los mexicano-americanos con ninos pequenos, por supuesto-la clase media de la familia de Dieguito de ningun modo representa la historia completa de la vida mexicano-americana. Se necesitaria buscar otros titulos para crear una coleccion que aporte tanto una ventana adecuada como un espejo sin distorsion.

La disponibilidad: un tercer peligro

Al tratar el tema de buscar libros, uno se halla ante otro peligro de elegir libros ilustrados multiculturales: la nocion que los libros autenticos con informacion acertada y con perspectivas interiores son faciles de encontrar. El reconocimiento y la disponibilidad son factores significativos para los maestros que procuran utilizar libros infantiles multiculturales. La disponibilidad tiene poco que ver con el contenido literario, pero puede afectar la probabilidad de que un maestro sepa siquiera que un libro existe.

Por ejemplo, tuvimos las siguientes experiencias al buscar copias de A Day's Work y A Gift from Papa Diego:

* La biblioteca local tenia cuatro copias de A Day's Work, prestadas todas hasta la semana siguiente. Dos ciudades cercanas tambien tenian copias en las estanterias.

* La biblioteca local tenia una copia de A Gift from Papa Diego, que estaba en la estanteria y nunca se habia prestado.

* La persona que contesto el telefono en una libreria local exclamo, "!Que libro mas bonito!" cuando se le pregunto si tenian una copia de A Day's Work. Habia mas de una copia disponible. Ella no tuvo que buscar esta informacion en la computadora.

* La misma empleada de la libreria ni sabia que existia Papa Diego. Lo busco en la computadora y dijo, "No tenemos el libro, pero puedo pedirlo para usted."

* Ambos libros estaban disponibles en Amazon.com, negocio en linea que vende libros. En el momento de escribirse esto, la ubicacion en una lista de ventas de A Day's Work era de 3.822. Papa Diego tenia un lugar muy inferior de 243.386.

Estas experiencias de ninguna manera son rarezas. Tampoco son sorprendentes, en vista de la naturaleza de los negocios de publicar y vender libros. La posicion de Eve Bunting en el mundo de la literatura infantil es tal que sus libros reciben el reconocimiento instantaneo. Ha publicado mas de 100 libros desde la decada de 1970 hasta el presente. Ronald Himler tambien es conocido; vende sus ilustraciones de libros en su Sitio Web. Bunting y Himler hacen su trabajo para las casas editoriales grandes. A Day's Work es producto de Clarion Books, una division de la gigantesca casa editorial Houghton Mifflin Company.

Benjamin Saenz y el ilustrador Geronimo Garcia no reciben un reconocimiento igual. Papa Diego es el primer libro infantil de Saenz, principalmente escritor de poesia y ficcion para adultos. Garcia trabaja como artista comercial en Texas. Cinco Puntos Press, su publicador, es una prensa pequena que tiene lazos fuertes con la comunidad Latina. En 1999, el National Endowment for the Arts (NEA-Fundacion Nacional para las Artes) rescindio una concesion de dinero a Cinco Puntos Press para ayudarlos en la publicacion de una traduccion de The Story of Colors (La Historia de los Colores) por el Subcomandante Marcos, el lider controvertido de la resistencia Zapatista en Chiapas, Mexico (Chouteau, 1999). Una fundacion privada posteriormente proveyo el dinero para el libro. Cinco Puntos desde entonces ha publicado otro libro por Marcos con la ayuda financiera de la misma fundacion (Byrd, 2000).

Tanto Papa Diego como A Day's Work recibieron resenas favorables en Horn Book y otras publicaciones principales. Una bibliotecaria en la biblioteca local se sintio tan impresionada con Papa Diego que pidio una copia, pero quedo en la estanteria mientras todas las copias de A Day's Work estaban prestadas. Una libreria local tenia copias de A Day's Work, pero no de Papa Diego. Si el libro no esta visible, a pesar de las resenas positivas, los posibles compradores no podran hojearlo durante el proceso de escoger los libros y es poco probable que sepan que existe.

Un cuarto peligro: El tiempo

Aunque pueden ser emocionantes las posibilidades de utilizar buena literatura multicultural en la clase, los maestros podrian sentirse agobiados por la perspectiva de hallar y evaluar los libros. No quieren ofender a nadie, ni desean hacer dano a ningun nino al que ensenan; pero les preocupa poder elegir y compartir, sin quererlo, libros inapropiados. Tipicamente, los dias laborales de los maestros ya estan ocupados y hasta fragmentados; cualquier tarea nueva, sin importar su valor intrinseco, puede parecerles como monumental.

Es esencial la informacion confiable y de profundidad sobre los diversos grupos y culturas en los Estados Unidos para evaluar la literatura infantil multicultural. Desgraciadamente, puede que tal informacion no formara parte ni de la educacion basica de primaria y secundaria de los maestros ni de su experiencia cotidiana. Como resultado, muchos maestros se hallan en un proceso de construir una base de conocimientos complejos y nuevos en su madurez. Durante el proceso, tambien es posible que tengan que deshacerse de la informacion erronea y los prejuicios que hayan absorbido (Southern Poverty Law Center, 2001), anadiendo asi un reto emocional a la problematica de hallar el tiempo para encontrar y utilizar los recursos disponibles para ayudar a los ninos a aprender sobre otras culturas.

Hemos tratado cuatro problemas que los maestros pueden encontrar al buscar libros ilustrados multiculturales para ninos pequenos. Es posible que los libros aplaudidos que retratan a grupos que no son europeo-americanos, como los libros de temas americano- indigenas anteriormente mencionados, sean objetos de criticas por perpetuar los estereotipos y las ideas equivocadas. Similarmente, como lo demuestra la discusion de dos libros sobre mexicano-americanos, un solo libro tiene poca probabilidad de ofrecer un retrato adecuado de cualquier cultura. Un punto tercero es que un maestro que busca libros multiculturales de alta calidad puede verse afectado por la carencia de reconocimiento de autores o ilustradores y la falta de acceso a las prensas pequenas que disponen de un presupuesto infimo para publicidad. El tiempo presenta el ultimo peligro; los horarios ocupados de los maestros pueden hacer que parezca apabullante la tarea ya dificil de hallar y evaluar la buena literatura multicultural para ninos.

Los educadores y maestros en entrenamiento pueden mantener presente que aprender a reconocer y compartir con los ninos la buena literatura multicultural es un proceso como tambien lo es el aprender acerca de personas distintas de uno mismo. Habiendo emprendido este proceso, deben esperar equivocarse o cometer errores de juicio. Cuando esto sucede, pueden reconocer los errores y utilizarlos para influir en la toma de decisiones futuras.

Las teorias sobre la raza como lente para enfocar la eleccion de literatura multicultural para ninos

Muchas veces, los educadores y otros que comparten la literatura con los ninos pequenos se preocupan por los peligros mencionados. Quiza se pregunten que contribuye a que los maestros sean tan vulnerables a los peligros que hemos descrito. Puede que cuestionen por que se publican y circulan todavia tantos libros con estereotipos, prejuicios e informacion inexacta mientras pueden pasar inadvertidos libros sin prejuicios y con representaciones acertadas. Tambien podrian preguntarse que motiva el fracaso frecuente de parte de criticos y comites de premiacion en notar los problemas con la exactitud y la autenticidad.

En esta seccion, empleamos algunas teorias contemporaneas sobre la raza y el racismo para tratar ciertas preocupaciones comunes de educadores y otros sobre los peligros implicados en elegir buena literatura multicultural para ninos.

La vulnerabilidad a errores al elegir literatura

Quienes desean elegir literatura multicultural para ninos que sea de buena calidad quiza se pregunten por que tanto ellos como sus colegas son vulnerables a los peligros aqui descritos. Las respuestas podrian encontrarse en factores que tienen sus raices en la ninez.

Hasta hace poco, es posible que no se haya reconocido el valor de la diversidad en muchas comunidades y dentro de las escuelas en particular. Aun ahora, puede que los libros de texto hagan poco para avanzar la conciencia multicultural (Meltzer, 2001; Loewen, 1995; Slapin, 1995). El multiculturalismo y la implementacion de un curriculo anti-prejuicios han sido corrientes importantes de reforma en la educacion de la ninez temprana durante la decada pasada. Como resultado, tal vez algunos maestros se hallen intentando construir una base de conocimientos nuevos y complejos dentro de un periodo corto, en programas de formacion docente o en clases de poblaciones diversas. El curriculo anti-prejuicios (Derman-Sparks et al., 1989) tiene sus raices en una teoria que afirma que las opresiones como el racismo y el sexismo surgen y se perpetuan por la ignorancia sobre las diferencias y el temor a ellas. Esta teoria implica una actitud activista hacia los prejuicios, la justicia y la equidad y recalca la relacion entre adulto y nino en el ambiente de la ninez temprana como el sitio del cambio social. El paradigma anti-prejuicios da por sentado que el comportamiento ejemplar, la intervencion y la instruccion pueden conducir a los ninos hacia actitudes que hacen falta para vivir bien en un mundo cuya diversidad va aumentando. Este paradigma coloca al maestro como alguien que tiene la oportunidad de examinar desde una optica critica la pedagogia y el ambiente del salon de clase y de hacer cambios que afirmen la diversidad y que ayuden a los ninos a resistir el prejuicio.

La docencia en el paradigma anti-prejuicios conlleva una responsabilidad considerable. Es el educador individual quien decide como intervenir cuando los ninos demuestran tener prejuicios, quien elige la literatura, quien conduce a los ninos a prestar (o no prestar) atencion a las imagenes que adelanten su entendimiento tanto de otras personas como de si mismos. En este proceso, los maestros tal vez tengan que deshacerse de la informacion erronea y los prejuicios que han acumulado, sumando asi un reto emocional al problema de hallar tiempo para encontrar y utilizar los recursos que ayudan a preparar a los ninos pequenos para la vida en un mundo diverso. Las estadisticas demuestran que, a escala nacional, la mayoria de los jovenes, hombres y mujeres, en los programas de formacion docente para la ninez temprana es europeo-americana, en una cantidad desproporcionada a la diversidad que encontraran en sus clases. Estos futuros maestros probablemente tienen sus raices en ambientes que no les ofrecieron la oportunidad, la necesidad ni las herramientas para el pensamiento critico sobre las construcciones de las diferencias, los prejuicios y la raza. Tal vez crean que ellos mismos no "tienen una cultura"-que "la cultura" solo existe como atributo de los grupos marginados.

Junto a la informacion exacta y sin prejuicios sobre los diversos grupos (incluso culturas europeo-americanas) dentro de la sociedad, algunos eruditos y teoricos perciben la "conciencia de la raza" como un componente esencial de la capacidad de identificar y eliminar el racismo en sus variados contextos (Sheets, 2000, p. 16). (Tambien se ha explorado el desarrollo de la identidad racial entre otros grupos, como la "identidad racial negra" [Sheets, 2000, p. 16], y puede que tambien influya en la manera que un maestro elige la literatura infantil para el uso en clase.) El articulo de Peggy McIntosh (1998), "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack" (El privilegio blanco: deshacer la maleta invisible) exhorta a los europeo-americanos a criticar los beneficios nunca mencionados de ser blanco, la mayoria de los cuales se asumen como "normales" en la vida. Los teoricos de la identidad racial Lawrence y Tatum (1998) han propuesto la idea que hay un continuo del desarrollo de la conciencia en la identidad racial y el comportamiento relacionado de los blancos, el cual puede servir de herramienta para la evaluacion critica de creencias y actitudes individuales. Algunas narrativas contemporaneas tal vez apoyen esta idea, incluso las de la maestra y autora judio-americana Vivian Paley (1999, 2000), que recalca los cambios en su propio entendimiento de si misma y de los ninos y adultos con los que esta en contacto.

Se ha discutido, entonces, que factores como la educacion carente de informacion importante sobre la diversidad de la sociedad estadounidense y que en cambio presenta prejuicio e informacion erronea; el "privilegio blanco," que hace perder de vista el significado verdadero de la raza en la vida estadounidense; y el desarrollo de la identidad racial, que refleja el nivel de conciencia de un individuo sobre la funcion de la raza en su vida y en el mundo en general, afectan la conciencia y el conocimiento culturales. Estos, a su vez, afectan la manera de uno de interpretar y utilizar la literatura infantil. Los maestros quiza sean menos vulnerables a los peligros si estan conscientes de las deficiencias en su propia educacion, de la naturaleza del privilegio blanco y del desarrollo de su propia identidad racial.

La publicacion y circulacion continuas de libros con imagenes problematicas

Los maestros y otros que desean elegir literatura con imagenes fuertes, autenticas y acertadas de personas de todos los grupos en la sociedad, frecuentemente se preguntan por que los autores y casas editoriales siguen produciendo libros nuevos con imagenes problematicas y por que tales libros siguen en circulacion mientras que los titulos con representaciones acertadas y sin prejuicios pasan inadvertidos.

Otra perspectiva teorica que se esta desarrollando ofrece una explicacion posible para tal fenomeno. Gloria Ladson-Billings (1998) y William F. Tate (Ladson-Billings y Tate, 1995) utilizan la teoria critica de raza (CRT o critical race theory) como base para discutir el impacto de la raza y el racismo en todo aspecto de la educacion. La CRT tiene sus raices en los estudios legales criticos, que examinan los factores sociales, economicos y politicos extralegales que afectan al sistema legal y resultan en un tratamiento desigual. La CRT cuestiona el punto de vista dominante que la experiencia blanca europeo-americana es, o debe ser, el estandar normativo, presentandose como una forma de eruditismo de oposicion politica que se basa en las experiencias de opresion racial que han tenido las personas de color en los Estados Unidos. La teoria incorpora el uso de la narracion literaria y los cuentos para cuestionar los modos en que la raza es parte de la sociedad (Villenas, Deyhle y Parker, 1999). Delgado (1995) describe la indole endemica del racismo en la sociedad estadounidense. No se trata de una serie de eventos aislados, sino que esta empotrado, institucionalizado-profundamente entretejido y a veces descarado pero muchas veces tan sutil que los miembros de la sociedad no pueden verlo. La teoria racial critica afirma que el racismo en los Estados Unidos otorga ciertos privilegios a las personas de antecedentes europeos, con factores adicionales relacionados a la clase social y el genero sexual. En efecto, las personas de la cultura principal aprenden desde pequenos a no reconocer el racismo y otras opresiones y a pasar por alto o negar las voces que plantean tales asuntos. De ahi que se mantenga el mito de la superioridad y la "normalidad" europeo-americanas (blancas).

Hibbitts (1994) percibe la manipulacion del idioma (en particular la metafora) y otras imagenes visuales que perpetuan el status quo en el campo del derecho; sus observaciones podrian tener implicaciones en el estudio de cualquier medio que emplee palabras e imagenes visuales, incluso la literatura infantil. Los teoricos criticos McCarthy y Crichlow (1993) observan que los miembros de grupos minoritarios en los Estados Unidos no suelen tener el control central sobre la produccion de imagenes de si mismos. Segun explica la CRT, entonces, los prejuicios y la informacion cultural erronea estan presente en la literatura infantil, en parte porque personas de grupos minoritarios no son quienes crean las imagenes; los miembros de la cultura dominante crean representaciones basadas en sus propias suposiciones equivocadas de como son los "otros."

Las decisiones de que se publicara, quien lo ilustrara y cuales tecnicas de mercado se emplearan son tomadas, tanto en el pasado como actualmente, principalmente por europeo-americanos, quienes son los duenos de las casas editoriales mas grandes y siguen dominando los puestos claves de control. Segun la CRT, son poco propensos a reconocer el papel de la raza y el privilegio en las decisiones que toman, y los cambios suceden "solo cuando se percibe que hay algun beneficio" para quienes tienen el poder (Asch, 2000). Las decisiones de autores y casas editoriales tienen un rol prominente en "A Sea of Good Intentions: Native Americans in Books for Children," de Melissa Kay Thompson (2001), un ejemplo de las maneras en que los estudios legales y la critica literaria pueden influir mutuamente respecto a la raza y el prejuicio. Thompson senala paralelos entre el prejuicio en unos libros infantiles especificos (incluso literatura contemporanea popular) y el prejuicio en encuentros especificos de los americano-indigenas con el sistema legal estadounidense, afirmando asi que tanto las decisiones judiciales como los libros reflejan el mismo racismo subyacente y apoyo para la idea de la superioridad de los blancos.

Resenas y premios que no reconocen la inexactitud ni la falta de autenticidad

Quienes buscan buena literatura multicultural con frecuencia descubren que los criticos y los comites de premiacion no toman en cuenta las cuestiones de exactitud y autenticidad culturales e historicas.

La teoria critica de raza y la teoria del desarrollo de la identidad racial podrian nuevamente ofrecer algun entendimiento en esta situacion. La critica de la literatura infantil, a lo largo de la historia, tambien ha pertenecido al dominio de los europeo-americanos. Las revistas de resenas como Horn Book y School Library Journal tienen una influencia fuerte en el reconocimiento, o la falta de este, de un libro. Las revistas principales son encabezadas por europeo-americanos, si bien en anos recientes estas revistas han procurado obtener un grupo mas diverso de criticos y de perspectivas criticas. Tambien han incluido resenas de varios libros multiculturales. Aun asi, los criticos de la cultura mayoritaria a veces favorecen un libro "multicultural" que despues recibe una evaluacion negativa de criticos que pertenecen al grupo retratado en este. Oyate, una organizacion que ofrece resenas y perspectivas interiores sobre los americano-indigenas en la literatura, ha puesto criticas en su Sitio Web de varios libros favorecidos por los criticos de la cultura mayoritaria (http://www.oyate.org/books-to-avoid/index.html).

Las obras de escritores e ilustradores europeo-americanos siguen dominando las listas de ganadores de los premios prestigiosos de mas antiguedad-las Medallas Caldecott y Newbery. Algunos libros ganadores han sido criticados mas tarde por su contenido racista (ademas del sexismo y otros problemas). Una especialidad pequena pero creciente de premios se ha creado a proposito para llamar la atencion a las obras de literatura multicultural, aunque se han hecho algunas objeciones a los premios (Aronson, 2001). Algunos ejemplos son el Coretta Scott King Award (http://www.ala.org/srrt/csking/), el Tomas Rivera Award (http://www.schooledu.swt.edu/Rivera/mainpage.html [ECRP Editor's note (12/21/04): this url is no longer active. See: http://www.education.txstate.edu/subpages/tomasrivera/]), el Pura Belpre Award (http://www.ala.org/alsc/belpre.html), y el New Voices Award (http://www.leeandlow.com/editorial/voices.html). Se estan manteniendo discusiones acerca de la creacion de un premio para la literatura infantil americano-indigena; los miembros de la American Indian Library Association esperan hacer el anuncio de los primeros premios en los dos anos entrantes (http://www.nativeculture.com/lisamitten/aila.html).

Segun apunta Hade (1997), "Los significados que mantenemos sobre la raza, la clase social y el genero (muchos de los cuales podrian ser estereotipos) median nuestra manera de interpretar el texto" (p. 235). Por eso, hay que fijarse atentamente en la "premisa que la conciencia y la comprension culturales son esenciales para el desarrollo y el uso de la literatura multicultural" (Barrera, Liguori y Salas, 1993, p. 205). Como los maestros previamente mencionados, los criticos y miembros de comites de premiacion podrian evaluar libros por medio de un enfoque aprendido en escuelas que presentaban un contenido de historia y estudios sociales inexacto y con prejuicios y hacian poco para fomentar la conciencia y la comprension culturales. Tambien podrian carecer de discernimiento critico sobre su propio desarrollo de la identidad racial y el impacto de este sobre sus planteamientos individuales acerca de la literatura infantil.

El uso de las teorias de raza para examinar la literatura infantil

Posiblemente serian utiles las ideas sobre la teoria de raza para facilitar la "lectura en contra de la costumbre" a nivel profundo y ofrecer a los maestros tanto la justificacion como la comprension para elegir libros con fuertes imagenes positivas de personas de grupos marginados. La lectura en contra de la costumbre se describe como "una manera de examinar lo que no se ha examinado, cuestionar lo que no se ha cuestionado y poner ante el escrutinio las afirmaciones no habladas que hace el texto sobre la manera en que se viven las vidas en la sociedad" (Temple, Martinez, Yokota, y Naylor, 1998, p. 43). Esto implica interrogar la literatura basado en preguntas como:

* ?Se retratan a los personajes "fuera de la cultura mayoritaria" como individuos o como caricaturas distorsionadas?

* ?Su representacion incluye informacion cultural especifica? ?O sigue los estereotipos?

* ?Quien tiene el poder en este cuento? ?Cual es la indole de este poder y como lo utilizan?

* ?Quien tiene sabiduria? ?Cual es la indole de su sabiduria y como la utilizan?

* ?Cuales son las consecuencias de ciertos comportamientos? ?Cuales comportamientos o rasgos de personalidad se ven recompensados?

* ?Como se los recompensa? ?Cuales comportamientos se castigan y como?

* ?Como se utiliza el idioma para crear imagenes de personas de cierto grupo? ?Como se utilizan los elementos artisticos para crear tales imagenes?

* ?Quien es el autor de este cuento? ?Y el ilustrador? ?Pertenecen a los grupos a quienes representan? ?Que les permite saber sobre el grupo? ?Que dicen que saben?

* ?De quienes son las voces que se escuchan? ?Cuales voces faltan?

* ?Cual es el mensaje que el texto y las ilustraciones presentan sobre la raza? ?La clase social? ?El genero? ?La edad? ?La resistencia al status quo?

Las raices de este tipo de lectura en contra de la costumbre se remontan a varias decadas. En 1948, por ejemplo, el National Council of Teachers of English (Concilio Nacional de Maestros de Ingles) publico We Build Together, que contenia "Criterios para juzgar los libros para jovenes sobre negros" (Rollins, 1948, p. 4), una lista de preguntas parecidas a las previamente citadas. El Council on Interracial Books for Children (Concilio sobre los Libros Interraciales para Ninos) creo en 1980 el Guidelines for Selecting Bias-free Textbooks and Storybooks (Guias para elegir libros de texto y de cuentos sin prejuicios); sirve actualmente de modelo para documentos similares.

El proposito de leer en contra de la costumbre no es el hallar los libros multiculturales "perfectos". No existe tal cosa, ni es probable que exista libro alguno sin ninguna ideologia. El proposito es el de ayudar a iluminar los lugares en que podrian estar escondidos los prejuicios, los estereotipos y la informacion erronea-escondidos, tal vez, hasta de los autores e ilustradores que producen las imagenes.

La literatura critica sobre los libros multiculturales puede ayudar a los educadores a leer ellos mismos en contra de la costumbre y ayudarles a guiar a los ninos en el proceso. En su libro de texto Children and Books (Los ninos y los libros), Zena Sutherland (1991) escribe, "El maestro, bibliotecario, critico o redactor profesional deberia conocer tanto los libros mismos como la literatura critica, ya que la critica implica hacer juicios que deben ser informados y objetivos" (p. 25).

Si los maestros han de interrogar la literatura eficazmente, es preciso que esten concientes de las resenas criticas que tratan los temas que conciernen a la teoria critica de raza. Pueden contar con tales revistas como Multicultural Review (http://www.mcreview.com/), Multicultural Education y The New Advocate (http://www.christopher-gordon.com/newadvocate.htm [ECRP Editor's note (11-13-03): This URL is no longer active]). El numero de septiembre 2001 de The Lion and the Unicorn trata directamente la teoria critica de raza. Podrian familiarizarse con las publicaciones especializadas como Studies in American Indian Literatures (http://www.richmond.edu/faculty/ASAIL/sail-hp.html), African American Review (http://web.indstate.edu/artsci/AAR/) y Asian Perspectives (http://www.uhpress.hawaii.edu/journals/ap/). La Smithsonian Institution tambien mantiene una bibliografia de resenas de libros que representan a los americano-indigenas (http://nmnhwww.si.edu/anthro/outreach/Indbibl/bibliogr.html). [ECRP Editor's note (04-12-05): This URL has changed: http://www.nmnh.si.edu/anthro/outreach/Indbibl/]

Los educadores tambien podrian familiarizarse con las casas editoriales pequenas como Cinco Puntos (http://cincopuntos.com) y Children's Book Press (http://www.cbookpress.org/). [ECRP Editor's note (09-08-04): This URL has changed: http://www.childrensbookpress.org/] Otra casa editorial pequena con un enfoque multicultural es la de Lee and Low, cuyos propietarios son asiatico-americanos (http://www.leeandlow.com/home/index.html). Las organizaciones como Oyate, cuyo enfoque es la literatura americano-indigena (http://www.oyate.org), son fuentes posibles de libros con perspectivas interiores. Es preciso que los maestros sepan que no hay por que aceptar imagenes que enganan y ensenan mal. Por ejemplo, podrian remplazar los usos y las imagenes problematicos de la vida americana indigena en Brother Eagle, Sister Sky; Knots on a Counting Rope; y Arrow to the Sun (vease Apendice II) con libros como A River Lost por Lynn Bragg (Metis), The Good Luck Cat por Joy Harjo (Muscogee Creek), y Jingle Dancer por Cynthia Smith (Muscogee Creek) (vease Apendice III). Tales libros aportan perspectivas sustanciales de los americano-indigenas contemporaneos como personas que viven en casas modernas, tienen empleos permanentes y mascotas, hacen frente a cuestiones ambientales y honran sus culturas de maneras especificas. Los libros por Bragg, Harjo y Smith tambien ofrecen a los ninos el acceso a voces americano-indigenas autenticas. The Good Luck Cat y Jingle Dancer recibieron premios en 2001 de Wordcraft Circle, una organizacion de escritores americano-indigenas.

Es una habilidad importante para los maestros la de saber como ayudar a los ninos a leer en contra de la costumbre en la literatura que encuentran. Esta habilidad ya forma parte de algunos cursos en los programas de formacion docente. Se sostiene a veces que los libros en los que se expresan los prejuicios de manera abierta y sin criticas pueden usarse efectivamente si los maestros senalan los defectos y discuten como y por que llegaron a existir tales representaciones negativas e inexactas. Se percibe que tal guia de parte de un adulto facilita el crecimiento de la conciencia de los ninos sobre estereotipos en la literatura y recalca la necesidad de una representacion mas exacta (Smithsonian Institution, 1996). A lo inverso, se argumenta que son pocos los adultos que pueden reconocer las problematicas, sin hablar de guiar eficazmente a los ninos hacia un entendimiento de los estereotipos y la falta de contexto historico contenidos en los libros (Thompson, 2001, p. 369).

Existe en la esfera de la educacion en la ninez temprana una tradicion robusta de tomar en cuenta la experiencia anterior de los ninos y de basarse en lo que ya saben para facilitar el aprendizaje (Dewey, 1938; Katz y Chard, 1991). Aunque son esenciales las conversaciones francas sobre el prejuicio, el racismo y otras opresiones para permitir a los ninos reconocerlas y oponerse a ellas (Derman-Sparks et al., 1989), podrian intervenir los factores de desarrollo que dificulten tales conversaciones (Katz, 1999) aun cuando los maestros y los padres reconocieran plenamente el prejuicio en los libros y en la sociedad en general. Por consiguiente, tal vez sirva a los intereses de todos los ninos el tener fundamentos solidos en imagenes exactas y de sensibilidad cultural antes de intentar tratar con libros problematicos. Se percibe las imagenes positivas como una base de conocimiento anterior, partiendo de la cual se puede cuestionar y criticar el prejuicio. Dentro de esta base de conocimiento (volviendo a la metafora de Sims Bishop), los ninos de grupos no mayoritarios reciben la afirmacion por medio de espejos sin distorsion y la conciencia de otros ninos se beneficia al mirar a traves de ventanas claras.

La formacion docente a traves de las teorias sobre la raza

Las suposiciones sobre el otro y el yo pueden tener raices profundas, segun sostiene la teoria critica de raza y la del desarrollo de la identidad racial. La literatura infantil multicultural "tiene exactamente tanta sensibilidad cultural como las personas que la crean y la utilizan" (Barrera, Liguori y Salas, 1993, p. 235). Es preciso que los maestros perciban e identifiquen las problematicas dentro de los libros como Brother Eagle, Sister Sky, o noten las diferencias entre A Gift from Papa Diego y A Day's Work. Los futuros maestros se perciben como precisando la guia de programas de formacion docente de la ninez temprana que ofrezcan oportunidades significativas para leer, escuchar y discutir las perspectivas criticas sobre la ideologia, la representacion y la identidad en relacion con la literatura, particularmente la multicultural. Se percibe que los educadores de docentes que han interrogado sus propias actitudes y creencias tienen la oportunidad para utilizar tanto esta comprension como otras relacionadas para ayudar a futuros maestros a prepararse para criticar la funcion de la raza, el poder y el privilegio en sus vidas y en la sociedad en general, y ser maestros mas eficaces (Sleeter, 1998).

Tales cambios incluyen mucho mas que un solo curso; implican volver a idear los fundamentos de la preparacion profesional para la ninez temprana-incorporando directamente y a proposito un punto de vista ensanchado sobre el paradigma predominante del desarrollo infantil, la comprension creciente del yo y del multiculturalismo, en los maestros y en los ninos. Muchos programas contemporaneos de preparacion profesional en asistencia social y consejeria psicologica exigen un componente de "terapia didactica" o auto-conciencia ademas de experiencia practica y cursos extensos en teoria y practica. El componente de terapia didactica, el cual se considera clave para ser un profesional efectivo, probablemente incluya trabajo individual y grupal. Quienes abogan por un cambio tan profundo en la formacion docente no sugieren que se exija la terapia personal para la preparacion docente en la ninez temprana, sino que los cursos y la experiencia practica se disenen para fomentar la conciencia critica de los propios antecedentes ademas de las actitudes y las creencias sobre los otros (Sheets, 2000, p. 16).

Comentarios

No queremos implicar que tal transformacion de la formacion docente no tenga opositores, ni que los proponentes de la teoria critica de raza y otros eruditos crean que serian sencillos tales cambios.

Es el dialogo ampliado lo que procuramos. Dado que la literatura multicultural buena para ninos tiene el poder de fomentar tanto la conciencia de otras perspectivas como la empatia con ellas, invitamos a los profesionales de la ninez temprana a comenzar a introducir la teoria critica de raza y las ideas relacionadas en el discurso sobre esta literatura y su papel en las vidas de los ninos pequenos. Este discurso puede extenderse hacia un dialogo sobre la preparacion docente y los fundamentos de la formacion profesional para la ninez temprana.

Como educadores de docentes, recomendamos que se comparta con los futuros maestros un mensaje sobre su responsabilidad de "decir la verdad" acerca de los seres humanos. Les hemos recordado a nuestros estudiantes que no compartirian a sabiendas con los ninos literatura que les diera informacion falsa sobre ciencia o matematica, porque danaria a los ninos en su entendimiento del mundo. Tambien se les pide que no toleren el uso de informacion falsa o enganosa sobre los grupos de personas en la literatura que comparten con los ninos. De hecho, exactamente como con la ciencia y la matematica, tienen la obligacion de presentar activamente la alternativa: imagenes acertadas y autenticas de todos los pueblos del mundo. Esta practica sirve los intereses de todos sus estudiantes-los que se crian en la cultura "mayoritaria" de la sociedad estadounidense y los que pertenecen a grupos a los que se ha marginalizado.

Los maestros y educadores de docentes, como individuos, no tienen por que esperar hasta que reciban el apoyo de toda la institucion en la que trabajan. Pueden empezar ahora a leer en contra de la costumbre y utilizar los recursos que pueden ayudar a facilitar el entendimiento de la raza y el privilegio en la sociedad. No puede darse por sentado que solo los europeo-americanos necesitan desarrollar esta conciencia. La comprension de otras culturas es esencial; los individuos de cualquier segmento de la sociedad podrian quedar poco informados, o bien informados, sobre cualquier otro grupo. La nueva concientizacion puede tener un impacto en la literatura que elijan los educadores y en la manera en que la compartan con los ninos pequenos.

Haciendo suya esta conciencia, pueden acercarse a la literatura infantil en clases de ninos pequenos con optimismo y determinacion: "No reconozco todavia todos los peligros, pero estoy conciente de las posibilidades de utilizar esta literatura en situaciones de la ninez temprana. No se siempre que es lo que he de buscar y escuchar, pero lo averiguare. Ya se donde buscarlo y como hacerlo atentamente. Entonces tomare las decisiones basadas en lo que veo y escucho, para el bien de todos los ninos en cuyas vidas tengo influencia."

Apendice I

Memorando sobre "El discurso ecologico" del Jefe Seattle

Para: Solicitantes del "Discurso ecologico" del Jefe Seattle

De: Washington/Northwest Collections, Washington State Library

El discurso dado por el Jefe Seattle en enero de 1854 es el tema de muchos debates historicos. Lo mas importante es que NO EXISTE NINGUNA TRANSCRIPCION TEXTUAL. Todos los textos conocidos son de segunda mano.

La primera version (Version 1) aparecio en el periodico Seattle Sunday Star el 29 de octubre de 1887, en un articulo escrito por el Dr. Henry A. Smith. El deja bien claro que su version no constituye una copia exacta, sino lo mejor que el pudo recopilar de las notas que tomo durante el evento. Hay un debate historico no resuelto sobre el dialecto indigena que el Jefe habria utilizado, el Duwamish o el Suquamish. En cualquier caso, todos concuerdan en que el discurso se tradujo a la jerga Chinook en el acto, ya que el Jefe Seattle nunca aprendio a hablar el ingles.

La segunda version (Version 2) fue escrita por el poeta William Arrowsmith en los ultimos anos de la decada de 1960. Esta fue un intento de presentar el texto en una forma mas contemporanea del habla, en vez del estilo victoriano elaborado del Dr. Smith. Con excepcion de esta modernizacion, es muy similar a la primera version.

La tercera version (Version 3) es tal vez la mejor conocida de todas. Esta version fue escrita por un profesor de Texas, Ted Perry, como parte del guion de una pelicula. Los hacedores de la pelicula se aprovecharon un poco de la licencia literaria, cambiando el discurso aun mas y convirtiendolo en una carta al Presidente Franklin Pierce, la cual se ha reimpreso con frecuencia. Ninguna carta jamas fue escrita ni por ni para el Jefe Seattle.

La cuarta version (Version 4) aparecio en una exhibicion en la Expo '74 en la ciudad de Spokane, Washington y consta de una edicion abreviada del texto del Dr. Perry (Version 3).

Sea cual fuera la version que se lea, las expresiones del discurso inspiran con certeza. Sin embargo, queda claro al leer el historial desigual que todavia hay cierta duda en cuanto a la autenticidad de las palabras originales del Jefe Seattle. Esto deberia mantenerlo presente cualquiera que utilizara el discurso.

La mejor descripcion de la saga del discurso del Jefe Seattle puede hallarse en un ensayo por Rudolf Kaiser: "Chief Seattle's Speech(es): American Origins and European Reception" ("El(los) discurso(s) del Jefe Seattle: Los origenes americanos y la recepcion europea," publicado en Recovering the Word: Essays on Native American Literature (Recuperacion de la palabra: Ensayos sobre la literatura americano-indigena) de University of California Press, 1987. Otra discusion excelente aparece en el articulo de David Buerge, "Seattle's King Arthur: How Chief Seattle Continues to Inspire His Many Admirers to Put Words in His Mouth" (El Rey Arturo de Seattle: La manera en que el Jefe Seattle sigue inspirando a sus muchos admiradores a poner palabras en su boca), en el periodico Seattle Weekly del 17 de julio de 1991.

Apendice II

Libros infantiles problematicos

A Day's Work por Eve Bunting. Ilustrado por Ronald Himler. Clarion Books, 1994.

Arrow to the Sun por Gerald McDermott. Viking Press, 1974.

Brother Eagle, Sister Sky por Susan Jeffers. Dial, 1991.

Knots on a Counting Rope por Bill Martin, Jr. y John Archambault. Ilustrado por Ted Rand. Henry Holt, 1987.

Apendice III

Libros infantiles recomendados

A Gift from Papa Diego por Benjamin Alire Saenz. Ilustrado por Geronimo Garcia. Cinco Puntos Press, 1998.

The Good Luck Cat por Joy Harjo. Ilustrado por Paul Lee. Harcourt Brace, 2000.

Jingle Dancer por Cynthia Smith. Ilustrado por Cornelius Van Wright y Ying-Hwa Hu. Morrow Junior Books, 2000.

A River Lost por Lynn Bragg. Ilustrado por Virgil Marchand. Hancock House Publishers, 1996.

Reconocimientos

Se presento una version de este articulo en un simposio que honraba a Lilian Katz en Champaign, Illinois, 5-7 de noviembre de 2000. Porciones de este articulo se tomaron de la disertacion doctoral de 2001 de Debbie Reese, Native Americans in Picture Books Recommended for Early Childhood Classrooms, 1945-1999 (Los Americano-Indigenas en libros ilustrados recomendados para las clases de la ninez temprana, 1945-1999), University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

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Jean Paine Mendoza esta cursando para el doctorado en el Departamento de Curriculo e Instruccion en la Universidad de Illinois en Urbana-Champaign. De ascendencia europeo-americana, Jean lleva mas de 25 anos trabajando en el ambito de la ninez temprana, en el cuidado infantil, los programas preescolares, el kindergarten, el primer grado de primaria, la educacion para los padres y la formacion docente. Ha ensenado cursos de literatura infantil y estudios sociales en el programa de formacion docente en la Universidad de Illinois. Su investigacion actual se centra en la motivacion y el uso de la tecnologia fotografica en las clases de primaria.

Jean Mendoza

College of Education

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

1310 S. Sixth St.

Champaign, IL 61820

Correo electronico: [e-mail]

Debbie Reese es profesora auxiliar visitante de literatura infantil en el Colegio de Graduados de Ciencias Bibliotecarias e Informaticas de la Universidad de Illinois en Urbana-Champaign. Ha dado cursos en literatura infantil a estudiantes del programa de formacion docente en el Colegio de Educacion de la Universidad de Illinois. Previamente una maestra de primaria, enfoca su investigacion en las representaciones de americano- indigenas en libros infantiles. Ha publicado numerosos articulos y capitulos de libros sobre dicho tema. Reese pertenece a la nacion indigena Pueblo, de Nambe Pueblo en el norte de Nuevo Mexico.

Debbie Reese, Visiting Lecturer

Graduate School of Library and Information Science

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

501 E. Daniel St.

Champaign, IL 61820

Correo electronico: [e-mail]

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