The Development of US Children’s Librarianship and Challenging White Dominant Narratives

Abstract

ethnic, and tribal (mis)representation in US children’s literature by, for example, writing about antiBlackness and Orientalism in Dr. Seuss’s body of work (Ishizuka and Stephens 2019) or studying the representation of anthropomorphic apes in picture books (Campbell 2018), there is, relatedly, a need for an examination of how library service to children enacts, replicates, and maintains the inequities of a white hegemonic society. The establishment of children’s librarianship was tied not only to the development of reading habits in children, but also to the shaping of their worldviews, their assimilation to White Supremacist “norms,” and their guidance toward “piety, purity, and knowledge” (Garrison 1972– 1973). As a firstgeneration, collegeeducated, Brown Puerto Rican children’s librarian, I’m aligning myself with the critical work done around whiteness, power, and racial identity in children’s librarianship. Through my work, and the work of Indigenous, Black, and People of Color (IBPOC) library workers such as Augusta Braxston Baker, Pura T. Belpré, Charlemae Hill Rollins, Effie Lee Morris, and Lotsee Patterson, we want to recognize and provide a revisionist history to center and affirm the lives and identities of Indigenous children and children of color and Indigenous librarians and librarians of color. Racial equity in library and information science (LIS) is an ongoing process, commitment, and work, and this chapter aims to examine, using a Critical Race Theory (CRT) lens, the history of US children’s librarianship and past and present 7