Blog Review: Latinxs in Kid Lit
Latinxs in Kid Lit // latinosinkidlit.com // 2014-present
Summary: Latinxs in Kid Lit is a blog focused on children’s and young adult literature by, for, or about Latinxs. It is intended for librarians, educators, and parents, as well as those who study, create, or publish children’s and young adult literature. The blog has four founders, along with eight regular contributors, and accepts guest bloggers. The team is composed of Latinx librarians, educators, scholars, and authors.
Review: The blog posts on Latinxs in Kid Lit include frequent interviews with librarians, authors, and illustrators, occasional news in Latinx literature for children and young adults, and extensive book reviews. The book reviews are detailed and include a thorough description, reflections on things like Latinx identity, literary elements, and illustrations, and teaching tips. Many reviews also include links to outside resources related to the book, such as articles and videos, which would be useful for librarians and educators.
The only downside to the reviews on Latinxs in Kid Lit is that there don’t seem to be any negative reviews, so it is not a useful resource for evaluating negative or inauthentic representation of Latinx characters or culture in children’s or young adult literature. For example, two highly popular middle grade graphic novels written by white women with Latina protagonists were published within the active dates of the blog: Roller Girl by Victoria Jamieson and Ghosts by Raina Telgemeier. A largely positive review of Roller Girl can be found on the blog here, but a search for Ghosts returned no results, despite the several negative reviews by prominent Latinx or indigenous children’s book reviewers, which can be found here, here, here, here, and here. There seems to be a distinct choice on the part of the blog creators to refrain from negative reviews, so the absence of a review for a well-known book by, for, or about Latinxs may speak louder than words in some cases.
In addition to the blog, the Latinxs in Kid Lit website also has several useful resources. These include a handy list of all winners of the Pura Belpré Award for Latinx children’s literature, along with links to blog posts about the books. There are also individual lists of all the books reviewed by the blog, broken up into picture books, middle grade, and young adult, and organized by author. The use of book covers in these lists make them easy to browse and navigate. Also available is a Road to Publishing series for book creators, and a list or recommended resources for further research. Latinxs in Kid Lit is a thorough, well-researched, and easily navigable resource for celebrating and learning about the best of Latinx children’s literature.
