There were many children’s books that I read and loved that were “window” books, showing me life during the Civil War with four sisters (Louisa May Alcott), travel in a covered wagon across the prairies (Laura Ingalls Wilder), even a scullery maid’s garret in early 20th century Britain (Frances Hodgson Burnett).
Reading, then, becomes a means of self-affirmation, and readers often seek their mirrors in books.įor many years, nonwhite readers have too frequently found the search futile. Literature transforms human experience and reflects it back to us, and in that reflection we can see our own lives and experiences as part of the larger human experience. When lighting conditions are just right, however, a window can also be a mirror. These windows are also sliding glass doors, and readers have only to walk through in imagination to become part of whatever world has been created or recreated by the author. Bishop wrote:īooks are sometimes windows, offering views of worlds that may be real or imagined, familiar or strange. The terms “mirror” and “window” books originally appeared in a groundbreaking 1990 article by the scholar of African American children’s literature, Rudine Sims Bishop. Nancy Larrick’s groundbreaking article “The All-White World of Children’s Books” appeared in 1964, not long before I was born, and the conversation continued. I’m not sure my father knew much about the need for me to see myself in books, or if he knew about the idea of “mirror” and “window” books. Books by Yoshiko Uchida- Journey to Topaz and Journey Home were (and still are, to my mind) some of the best books about camp her collection of Japanese kids’ folk tales taught me about Momotaro and Issun Boshi and the Crane Wife. Some of the most precious books to me were ones that featured Japanese American girls like me. One day I looked at our family bookshelf and realized that on a full shelf were loaned books that my dad had brought home from the university library where he worked as head of circulation.
I’ll never forget coming back from our trip to Japan to find that my auntie had left me the entire Anne of Green Gables series on my desk. Growing up in a family of voracious readers and three librarians, I was incredibly lucky to have books-almost as many as I wanted.
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