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"Paper White" Characters and the Desire for Homogeneity in Spanish-Language Picturebooks
- Bookbird: A Journal of International Children's Literature
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 61, Number 2, 2023
- pp. 37-47
- 10.1353/bkb.2023.0022
- Article
- Additional Information
Abstract:
In this article, we examine a corpus of recommended Spanish-language picturebooks published in Spain and Latin America between 2012–2018. We examine a corpus of fifty-six books that have received awards or are highlighted by reading-promotion institutions inquiring into how race and ethnicity are narrated in them. We first notice a predominant whiteness in these picturebooks: often characters are "paper white," as their faces take the white of the default color of the paper. We undertake a critical content analysis informed by intersectionality and decolonial thinking to show how ethnicity is absent, erased, or folklorized in these recommended picturebooks.