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Diverse Books to Use in Speech Therapy

by Liliana Diaz August 24, 2020 2 Comments

Growing up, I was very fortunate to have diverse teachers who came from different backgrounds. Many of my teachers were either black, Latinx, White, Asian and/or Arabic all throughout my elementary school and high school experience. Unfortunately, not many people can say they grew up having diverse teachers while in school. However, although I had many diverse teachers growing up, and as I reflect back to my childhood education, I do not recall reading stories or remembering lessons where I saw my own culture reflected upon or where I saw a mirror image of my own cultural identity being a Latina, being a Mexican-American female living on the Southside of Chicago. Unfortunately, I cannot tell you or give you an example of a book that deeply resonated with who I am because all the stories I ever read in school were about mostly white characters. At the time, I did not think much about representation in story books growing up. It wasn't a factor that bothered me growing up because I did not know better. I was not taught to question the teacher and that was the mentality that I grew up with as a kid. However, now as an adult and as I reflect upon the literature that I read growing up, I can strongly say that I believe I missed out on a lot of opportunities to learn about my own culture in the school setting. I wish I could have learned about Mexico's rich cultural history a lot sooner. I am, however, very grateful and fortunate to have two loving parents who have always taught me valuable lessons about my culture and have passed down rich Mexican traditions to me. They taught me what it means to have cultural pride. Unfortunately, not all students are fortunate to have families that are invested in embracing their own cultural practices, teachings, identities for whatever the reason may be; these are the students on our caseloads that we need to keep in mind when doing speech therapy and considering the types of materials that we are using.

The Cooperative Children's Book Center (CCBC) School of education, at the university of Wisconsin Madison, collects data on books by and about people of color. According to the CCBC, children's books depicting main characters from diverse backgrounds are lower than the number of books with main characters who are animals. The following data has been obtained from the CCBC website:

11.9% of main characters in children’s books are Black/African
1% are Native/First Nations, 5.3% are Latinx
8.7% are Asian/Asian American, .05% are Pacific Islander
41.8% are white
29.2% are animal/other
3.4% of books have a main character with a disability
3.1% have a main character who identifies as LGBTQIAP+

As listed above, almost HALF of the books are about white characters and roughly about 30 percent of books are about animals. We need to improve this situation and we can do that by including more diverse books in our therapy materials as SLPs for the following main reasons:

1. We need to demonstrate representation

2. We need to be able to reflect the reality of our communities

3. We need to create an environment of inclusivity

4. We need therapy materials that can create a positive learning environment

We can ensure to provide representation and inclusivity through the therapy materials that we use on a daily basis with our students. Before choosing diverse materials in therapy, there are some important points to consider when selecting the material.

Ask yourself these questions before purchasing a book or therapy material that represents a certain group of people:

Who wrote it?
Is the author of the book from the culture that is being depicted?
Does the book reflect the community that you work in
Does the book express negative attitudes towards a group, a heavy negative bias, or express stereotypes?
Is the book accurate?
Are the events in the story accurate?
Does it align correctly historical events?
Is the book age appropriate?
Does the book include age appropriate vocabulary?
Does the vocabulary or language of the book align with the culture or group being represented?

As speech therapists, we are often easily influenced by the popular speech therapy books that are often talked on social media or blogs. I am guilty of using popular books like “There was an old lady who swallowed a fly, if you give a mouse a cookie, etc. Don't get me wrong, these are great books that allow SLPs to target a variety of goals. However, you can also target a variety of goals with the following diverse and multi-cultural books as well. Here are my top picks for books to use in therapy as well as language goal areas that you can target with the books.

Multi-Cultural Books

Book Title: The Day You Begin by Jacqueline Woodson

Summary: This book is about being and feeling different and/or feeling like an outsider but accepting who you are and where you come from.