An 11 year-old African-American girl, who was frustrated at not seeing more girls like her in the books she was reading, has reached her goal of finding a thousand ‘black girl books’.
Marley Dias, from West Orange in New Jersey, began her drive last year, saying she was tired of reading only about white boys and their dogs.
After an outpouring of support online and offline, she’s exceeded her goal.
With the help of Instagram and the Twitter hashtag #1000blackgirlbooks, she collected a thousand books with main characters SHE could relate to – and raised awareness of the need for more diversity in children’s literature.
Marley was especially concerned about the representation of young black girls in literature – but experts say boys face similar problems too:
