At Barefoot Books, it is our absolute priority to make sure our contributors, audiences and team members feel safe and respected.

Following the example of the esteemed publishing industry influencer We Need Diverse Books, Barefoot Books will no longer use the term #OwnVoices as a descriptor for children’s books or their creators, and will be replacing the term with specific descriptors in our marketing materials wherever possible.

To quote the WNDB blog post on this decision:

“#OwnVoices was created as a hashtag by author Corinne Duyvis in September 2015. It was originally intended as a shorthand book recommendation tool in a Twitter thread, for readers

When I was a child, beauty was white or white-proximate.

Positive representation of Black people in the media was so rare that when we came across it, we ran to it like lost souls in a desert run to an oasis. Of course, we had Jet, Essence and Ebony, the triumvirate of Black mass media for decades. But there is something about stories. Whether they are told on a screen or in books, stories convey a society’s sense of itself—what is acceptable and unacceptable, real and impossible, normal and aberrant. What was and is still missing from children’s literature are depictions of children of colorcolour as radically normal.

At Barefoot Books, we stand for justice for Black people everywhere.

We abhor the recent murder of George Floyd. We not only grieve his life – we also grieve the fact that this is an experience common to Black Americans and Black people all over the world.

Our mission is to open children’s hearts, minds and worlds. An essential part of this is helping adults raise anti-racist children. Talking explicitly about issues like culture, race, religion, abilities and sexual orientation is crucial – for children and adults alike.