NPR's 100 Best-Ever Teen Novels List Slammed for Lack of Diversity Titles
September 11, 2012
More than 75,000 people submitted titles for "NPR's 100 Best-Ever Teen Novels List." The final list has been hailed as a triumph in one way because 63 percent of the books were written by females; this is not a common occurrence for most genres. However, the final list has also caused kidlit fans, including Speak author Laurie Halse Anderson, to raise concerns about the underwhelming presence of diversity titles.
"The resulting 'Your Favorites: 100 Best-Ever Teen Novels' included only two books whose protagonists are people of color, which critics called unjust. The two were Sandra Cisneros' The House on Mango Street and Sherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. One of the four heroines in a third book, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, by Ann Brashares, is half Puerto Rican."