Fictional Books About Immigration Help Kids Understand Diversity

October 10, 2000

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Children’s books about immigration help kids understand diversity and should be used in the classroom more frequently, according to a new book by a University of Florida professor.

“These books help us to see where we’ve come from and where we’re going,” said Ruth Lowery, an assistant professor in the department of teaching and learning in UF’s College of Education. “The treatment that immigrants receive today in society is not new.”

Lowery’s book, “Immigrants in Children’s Literature,” published in August, is an analysis of 17 fiction books about immigration that are used in middle school classrooms.

“This study was to see if these books show images that we don’t often talk about, and they do,” Lowery said.”For the most part, in most of these books, you could find images that weren’t the types of representations you normally see of immigrants.”

The books can go a long way toward dispelling some of today’s stereotypes of immigrants, Lowery said.

“Minority groups, such as Mexicans in California and Haitians in Florida, are often just considered to be poor and coming here to live off the government,” Lowery said. “Even minority groups that have been here for generations are wrongly categorized as being separate from other Americans.”

Books that deal with the problems of immigrants help children to understand — and better accept — diversity, which in turn helps to cut down on stereotypes and prejudice, Lowery said.

The books studied include:

• “Journey of the Sparrows,” by Fran Leeper Buss, a book about a family of Salvadoran refugees. “The characters worked hard, but when payday came, immigration authorities were called in to deport them,” Lowery said. “It shatters the image that immigrants don’t try to work hard.”
• “The Crossing,” by Gary Paulsen, about a Mexican orphan who yearns to come to the United States. “People often don’t consider the factors that cause immigrants to seek refuge here,” Lowery said. “A lot of them come just to survive. This helps you see beyond the stereotype that they’re coming to seek welfare.”
• “The Star Fisher,” by Laurence Yep, about Chinese immigrants in Virginia in the 1920s. “In this book, people in the town were unable to look beyond the fact that they were Chinese,” Lowery said. “This teaches kids to look beyond what’s on the surface because there’s so much more underneath.”

“We want students to understand how to treat each other better,” Lowery said. “You

may be part of one of the groups that overcame a stigma a century ago. Some of the students, after reading these books, were surprised. Nobody had told them that this had happened in their families.”

However, for kids to benefit fully from reading about immigrants, teachers should build curriculums around the books and encourage kids to explore topics of diversity, said Kathy Egawa, the associate executive director for elementary and middle schools for the National Council of Teachers of English.

“If you sit in your classroom and just read the book, I don’t know if it will reduce your prejudice,” she said. “But if you connect it to the real world, it can really have an impact. Teachers should encourage kids to interact with their parents and grandparents or older adults in their community who may have been immigrants. This type of experience really does change people. If children have a good experience that a teacher can create at school, they may not have the same prejudices their families have.”

If schools don’t offer the books, Lowery said, parents can urge their children to do the reading on their own at home.

“Kids are at home more than they’re at school, so education there is important too,” she said. “They should also encourage their children to discuss the books with them so that they can help them understand the meaning.”