The Cooperative Children’s Book Center released its latest Diversity Statistics report on children’s literature, showing another year of small increases in books with BIPOC primary characters and significant BIPOC content.
The modest increases in diversity in children’s literature continued in 2023, according to the latest Diversity Statistics report released by the Cooperative Children’s Book Center (CCBC).
In 2023, 49 percent of the books the CCBC documented had significant BIPOC content (up from 46 percent in 2022) and 40 percent had at least one BIPOC primary character (up from 39 percent in 2022). The number of books with at least one BIPOC creator was about the same as 2022. Those numbers continue the trend of slow growth in representation year to year. In 2022, the books with significant BIPOC content went up two percent (from 44 to 46) while BIPOC primary characters jumped three percent (from 36 to 39).
For this report, the CCBC analyzed 3,491 books for children and teens that were published in 2023.
See a breakdown of the numbers in the CCBC’s graphic below.
The CCBC has been documenting books for children and teens it receives annually by and about Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) since 1994. In 2018, the CCBC began to document additional aspects of identity in its analysis, including disability, LGBTQIA+, and religion.
Read the full press release below.
