How to Do a Children’s Book Inventory

You most likely have heard that diversifying your bookshelf is important. Maybe you even actively seek out children’s books that feature cultures other than your own and read them to the children in your life frequently. That is great, but how do you know what you might be missing? We all have areas we can improve on so how do you know what those are when it comes to your bookshelf? Do a children’s book inventory! 

Why Should I Do A Children’s Book Inventory?

You might be asking yourself, “is all this really necessary? I am a good caregiver who loves everyone equally.” To that I say, love is not enough. We live in a racist, homophobic, and transphobic world that actively punishes disabled people for existing at every turn. If you aren’t doing something to actively combat those images, you are passively supporting them. There is no neutrality here. 

What Do the Publishing Numbers Say?

Every year the Cooperative Children’s Book Center at the University of Wisconsin tracks children’s book diversity, you can take a look at the numbers here.

For example, of the 3115 books they received for review from US publishers in 2020 only 25 were written by indigenous people. That is about .8%! When you look at the numbers of books written with indigenous main characters the numbers are only slightly better coming in at 40 books or about 1.3%. 

In 2017, the most recent numbers I could find, only 3.68% of the books received for review by US publishers had significant LGBTQ+ content or characters. With the currently backlash and purposed banning of books about race and LGBTQIA+ folks (if you don’t know this is happening please do some googling, start here), who knows what will happen on the publishing end! It is clear, however, lots of folks in power (I will let you guess/ google who) want to keep books about race and LGBTQIA+ folks out of kids’ hands and minds. All the more reason to include them!

How Does This Connect to My Children’s Book Inventory?

You may be wondering what any of this has to do with you doing a book inventory. Thank you for asking. I’m gonna tell you. In a capitalist system, the books that get published are the ones publishers think are going to sell a lot of books. If there was a runaway best seller or two that had indigenous main characters, more publishers would seek out and publish books with indigenous main characters. The ultimate aim of the book inventory is to see what diversity your bookshelf is lacking and then make a plan to include it. So now that all that is out of the way. How do you get started?

Step One: Decide What You Are Looking For In Your Children’s Book Inventory

It is impossible to focus on everything at once. You need to clearly define what categories of diversity you want to inventory in your library. Are you going to focus on books featuring disability? Or see what racial diversity you have present? Are you going to inventory books with LGBTQIA+ main characters? Get specific! It is absolutely possible that a book would fall into more than one of those categories. I suggest picking one or who types of diversity at a time to check for per book inventory. You should do them often!

If you want to do a deep dive into the types of LGBTQIA+ representation you have, I suggest following the acronym: Lesbian relationships, Gay relationships, Bisexual characters, Transgender characters, Non-binary characters, Intersex characters, Agender characters, and Asexual characters. If you would rather inventory by type of story, I recommend using the categories from my 4 Types of LGBTQ Children’s Books You Need for Better Diversity post which can be found here.

Step Two: Gather All the Books You Want to Include in Your Children’s Book Inventory

You can’t inventory what you don’t know so gather all the books you would like to inventory. I highly recommend separating the books into age categories or by reader/ target audience. It probably doesn’t do a lot of good to inventory all your picture books, middle grade, young adult, and adult books all together. Doing so might give you a false impression of the overall representation of any given category. 

For example, let’s say you did just do one big inventory of all the books in your house looking to see if you have positive LGBTQIA+ representation in your book collection. In this hypothetical family there is a toddler, a high schooler, and a parent. The toddler has 100 books total with 15 positively featuring LGBTQIA+ characters. High schooler has 100 books with one book positively featuring LGBTQIA+ characters. The parent in this family has 100 books with 24 positively featuring LGBTQIA+ characters. In total there are 300 books and 40 of them have positive LGBtQIA+ representation. That seems pretty great! However, if you didn’t break the books down by person you wouldn’t see that the high schooler could really use more positive LGBTQIA+ representation books available. 

Next Steps After You Have Done Your Children’s Book Inventory

Once you have completed your children’s book inventory you now have some valuable information. It is important that you put that information into action. Figure out how to increase representation in the areas that you are lacking in. Set both short and long term goals. A great short term (1 month-ish) goal could be to check out 2-3 books from the library that would add in more of the representation your library needs. Read around! Find books that you love! Long term (6 month to 1 year-ish) perhaps you want to add 3 books in those categories.

In Conclusion

A children’s book inventory is great, but it isn’t enough to just have the books. You have to seek out the education to know how to use them. Read the books yourself before you present them to children, and prepare yourself for the questions that you might get. You won’t know all the answers and that is ok. Look things up and come back to the conversation. Research, revisit, learn, and grow through connecting with your children by reading books. Now get out there and read something that would make a conservative school board furious!

 If you want to extend your learning check out the posts below for more ways to integrate children’s books featuring LGBTQIA+ characters.

LGBTQ Children’s Books: 4 Types You Need For Better Diversity

How to Read LGBTQ Children’s Books Without Harming the LGBTQ Community