Growing demand for bilingual children’s books, despite obstacles
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The chatter of little voices fills the cozy lounge at Busboys and Poets on 14th Street, the bookstore and café in Columbia Heights, part of the historic center of D.C.’s Latino community. Once the elementary schoolers settle down for story time, Lulu Delacre warmly greets them. “¡Buenos días!”
The award-winning author and illustrator of bilingual children’s books has traveled from her Silver Spring home one sunny morning earlier this spring to read from her new book about the Spanish alphabet, “!Olinguito de la A a la Z!”
Raised in Puerto Rico by her Argentine parents, Delacre has made a career out of creating bilingual books and calls the opportunity to write stories that celebrate both U.S. culture and her Latino heritage “a joy.” The intentional and careful balance of these two cultures and languages are evident in her children’s stories.
During the 1980s, Delacre started writing her children’s books because she could not find them for her own daughters when they were growing up in El Paso, Texas, a city on the Mexican border with a large Latino population.
“I thought: ‘If I have a need, then there must be other mothers that have this need,’” Delacre says.
Demand for children’s books that reflect Latino realities is growing, considering that in the United States, people of Hispanic origin are the largest minority group, making up about 17 percent of the current population. Experts estimate that the Hispanic population will be about twice as large, surpassing 100 million people, by 2050. Locally too, Latinos are a growing part of the greater Washington-area, expected to surpass one million residents by 2025, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The Spanish language is one of the fastest-growing languages in the world. Among U.S. Latinos over the age of 5 years, three-fourths of speak Spanish, according to the Pew Research Center.
Why would we all blend into one culture, when we can have a rich patchwork of cultures that make us more vibrant?” —Lulu Delacre
A niche market in bilingual and Spanish-only books has emerged in recent decades. Nevertheless the major trade book publishing companies have yet to meet the “tremendous need” that originally inspired Delacre.
In the children’s book market, the major trade publishers include Simon & Schuster, Penguin Random House, Scholastic, and HarperCollins. Smaller specialty presses geared towards Latino readers such as Arte Público Press, Lee & Low Books, Cinco Puntos Press, and Floricanto Press significantly add to the number of bilingual or Spanish-only books published each year. This Latino-focused children’s book market, which caters to infants through young adults, primarily sells to schools and libraries where bilingual books are very popular. But the numbers of Latino children’s books have remained relatively stagnant since at least the mid-1990s, according to the Cooperative Children’s Book Center, which has kept statistics on books by and about people of color since 1994.
“There never seems to be a point where books by and about people of color surpasses 10 percent of the total number of books,” says Kathleen Horning, the director of the Cooperative Children’s Book Center.
“The big trade publishers publish at least a few books a year that are by or about Latinos,” Horning says. “But there are a number of small, independent, alternative presses in the U.S. that really have published the lion’s share.”
Arte Público Press, the oldest and largest Hispanic press in the United States, established in 1979, is a main provider of books that represent Latino life experiences. In 1994, Arte Público launched Piñata Books, an imprint for children and young adult literature.
“Our primary motive is to create entertaining and culturally authentic books that Latino kids can see themselves in,” says Nicolás Kanellos, the founder and director of Arte Público Press.
The Latino authors at his press, Kanellos says, have the freedom to explore different kinds of themes and stories that showcase the diverse experiences of Latinos in the United States. Unfortunately, this freedom to write on a variety of subjects is not common at other publishing houses. According to publishing industry insiders, Latinos are often encouraged to write about certain cultural, socioeconomic or political subjects stereotypically associated with Latinos.
“Many authors of color are pressured to write certain types of books. I’ve heard Latino authors say they feel pigeonholed into writing certain subjects,” says Hannah Ehrlich, the director of marketing and publicity for Lee & Low Books, the largest multicultural publisher in the United States and publisher of Delacre’s book.
Given the large and diverse population of Latinos in the United States, why would Latino authors have less freedom to write on any subject? Experts say one reason may be the lack of diversity at publishing companies. In 2015, Lee & Low created the Diversity Baseline Survey, which asked publishing companies to share data about the racial and ethnic composition of their work forces. About 80 percent of staff members at the U.S. publishing houses that responded are white while only 5.5 percent are Latino.
Meanwhile, stagnant sales of Latino books are linked to economic pressure on libraries and schools, many of which have seen big cuts to their book buying budgets in recent years. Since the education field is the main market for diverse children’s titles, bilingual book sales have suffered, as well. When concern about financial stability moves to the fore, the motivation to diversify book content can fall by the wayside, according to literary agent Adriana Domínguez.
However, there are signs of a brighter future ahead for Latino children’s books.
In 2016, Matt de la Peña became the first Latino author to win the John Newbery Medal, one of the most important honors in children’s literature, for his book “Last Stop on Market Street”.
Domínguez says Latinos authors are beginning to have more opportunities to create varied content.
“We are finding agents and publishers looking for more innovative material by diverse writers that breaks the mold and helps to shatter stereotypes,” says Domínguez, an agent at Full Circle Literary. She previously worked as executive editor of HarperCollins Children’s Books, where she managed the children’s division of the Rayo imprint.
“Publishing, like everything else, is cyclical,” she says. “After the 2000 census that highlighted exponential growth within the Latino community, publishers became more interested in catering to this particular group.
“Sadly, the interest in expansion of any kind came to a sudden halt as a result of the 2008 economic crisis. The industry has begun to bounce back in recent years and once again look for ways to improve and reach more readers,” Domínguez says.
Lulu Delacre is also optimistic. She feels she can write about any topic and tries to create stories that capture the imagination of all children.
At her Busboys and Poets reading in March—where the children looked mesmerized by the story of el Olinguito, a raccoon-like mammal from South America—it is clear that Delacre’s bilingual stories do exactly that. As a hush settled over the room, her young audience was transported to the cloud forests of Ecuador.
“Why would we all blend into one culture,” she asks, “when we can have a rich patchwork of cultures that make us more vibrant?”
—Alyssa Anderson
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