Teaching College Students to Write History for Children: A Course Model

Children’s literature has a diversity problem. A 2018 study by the Cooperative Children’s Book Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison found that of more than 3000 children’s books published that year, roughly 50% featured main characters who were White. Only 10% featured Black characters, 7% featured Asian / Pacific Islander characters, and 5% featured Latinx characters. (27% of the books surveyed featured animal characters.) By far the least represented group in children’s literature were Native Americans, who appeared in fewer than 1% of the books surveyed.

This paper describes a co-taught course, mounted at Amherst College in the spring of 2023, that challenged students to collaboratively research and write children’s books on topics related to Indigenous history. The overarching aim of the course was to explore the ethics and impact of inclusive representation in children’s media, particularly as it related to history. Working in collaboration with local public school librarians, teachers, and 4th graders, as well as Native American knowledge keepers, educators, and cultural consultants, students grappled with the need to write histories on raw, difficult, and often still painful subjects without whitewashing or sugarcoating the past. They also discussed questions related to authorial voice and visual representation, as well as the ethics of writing about historical topics pertaining to communities and cultures that are not one’s own. This paper offers a model of a community engagement course that can be translated to other college and university settings. It also highlights the importance of pushing college students to think beyond the classroom, and of asking them to consider how children engage with historical narratives in their schools, communities, families, and individual lives.