EllRay Jakes series - Sally Warner

I highly recommend diversifying children’s bookcases with this fantastic series featuring a very relatable third-grader: EllRay Jakes, whose primary concerns include being the shortest kid in his third-grade class, becoming a basketball whizz, and all the usual third-grade best friend drama.

Diversity in children’s lit is more than simply including a token character of color; our kids need to read about life experiences centering on characters of color. This series is a step in normalizing characters that aren’t white, as completely capable of headlining a story. The fact that EllRay is a Black child, certainly influences his story, but it is clear that he is very relatable and speaks to young readers regardless of their own backgrounds.

I firmly believe that diversity in literature for kids does not mean that every book must tackle the subject of racism. After all, centering Black and POC voices exclusively on trauma, isn’t very diverse, is it? Rather, diversity should also mean normalizing non-white characters and experiences, and enabling children to discover common ground. No doubt, there is a very important place on our kids’ bookshelves for the seminal works of Zora Neale Hurston, Christopher Paul Curtis, Mildred D. Taylor, et all.; but we also need a healthy dose of “everyday diversity”. To me, this means, telling ordinary tales and especially stories of joy and laughter, that feature main characters that also happen to be POC.

Recommended: 2nd-3rd grade