The American Library association has a new poster about Ramona (the Beverly Cleary character). Several librarians have complained about the poster's lack of diversity - no people with disabilities, only one or two people of color.
Apparently, these librarians have an inaccurate memory of Cleary's books, and that is what annoys me. Why on earth were they expecting a wildly diverse group of characters on a Beverly Clearly poster? No one is forcing these librarians to buy the poster, if it isn't diverse enough for their libraries! But it's ridiculous to blame ALA for creating a poster with Cleary characters that reflects the books - would they have preferred ALA to change the races and physical abilities of Cleary's characters, just to fit some idea of diversity?
To phrase this another way: if the poster were of Ann Cameron's characters ("Julian and friends"), would anyone expect ALA to make some of Cameron's characters Caucasian or Asian?
To my horror, I've discovered that some of these children's librarians didn't realize these were Cleary characters. Seriously, how does one call oneself a children's librarian without being able to recognize Cleary characters?
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