Young Diverse Readers (YDR) is an innovative Latina-owned consulting business that offers professional development training and one-on-one consulting services tailored to the unique needs of its clients. Their objective is to create diverse, equitable, and inclusive environments within libraries, schools, learning centers, and service agencies that promote a welcoming organizational culture and inspire historically marginalized youth to feel valued, respected, and empowered.
VISION
Our vision is to create opportunities that showcase cultural awareness, acceptance, and understanding. Overall, giving each child and teen a voice through literature that reflects their multicultural world and creates a climate of inclusiveness by seeing human connections where all feel genuinely valued and respected in a culturally pluralistic world.
MISSION
Our mission is to remove Brown and Black disparities from youth curriculums, programs, and services by providing diverse expertise, implementing complimentary support within organizations, and successfully training paraprofessionals and professionals through tailored training and one-on-one consulting.
BACKGROUND
Children and teen literature are primary conduits for relaying messages to youth via shared readings, storytimes, read-alouds, reading assignments, and more.
From utero, each child begins to hear their immediate world, and by 3 months, they develop a better handle of what is being read to them. At six years old, children use pictures and context to decipher unfamiliar words. While celebrating their ninth-year milestone, grade school children start analyzing texts for meaning, graduating to analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating ideas from the text by high school.
However, there is a lack of diverse and inclusive representation in children and teen literature. Publishing companies often focus on releasing predominately white, female, heterosexual, and non-disabled characters in youth literature. Thus, displaying the need for advocacy and diverse, equitable, and inclusive representation in books and literary formats for youth readers.
https://www.understood.org/en/articles/reading-skills-what-to-expect-at-different-ages?_sp=17c3c568-2beb-4d3a-be34-089caec77225.1653509624294#Babies_(ages_0%E2%80%9312_months)https://ccbc.education.wisc.edu/literature-resources/ccbc-diversity-statistics/books-by-and-or-about-poc-2018/#USonly