ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I unfold the references and theoretical stances that inform my position: a cultural studies perspective on children’s books that seeks to identify recurrent narratives about ‘race’ and ethnicity. I move away from distinguishing rights from wrongs and from the need of identifying those ‘good’ books about cultural diversity to focus instead on how certain theoretical developments allow us to understand better what texts do or attempt to do. The question of why children’s literature underrepresents minorities or ‘different’ ethnical origins has been there for a long time; I attempt to comment on this not so much from the paradigm of representation but thinking about how narrative and identity are intertwined concepts, how identity is constituted in narratives, a perspective that guides us in the plot analysis of the next chapter. Finally, I explain the selection of the case study materials, 60 children’s books recommended to educate on cultural diversity.
