African childrens book

Something makes me very annoyed and pissed off!

Since Leo is now becoming more aware of his surroundings, he is very curious and is busy

 discovering the world. Out of this reason we decided to start reading books for him. The last

 time we tried, he was six months (I thought it was a good idea to start early). Well it didn´t worked 

out good, he wanted to tear the book down and ended up banging on it, it just wasn’t possible.

 I think he's a bit more ready now; he shows an interest in books he looks curiously at the pictures

 and we´re able to catch his attention for some minutes before he would begin to tear the book down.

 A good start, I think.

Oh well, now back to the issue that makes me angry and have left me with a huge disappointment.
 We do have a lot of great books from the Go boken that sends books as the child's grows. I´ v had 
some truly thoughts about this thing about books, and I shortly came to the decision to look for books
 that feature children of color. I really don´t remember having that kind of book as a child. All the books
 I came across as I child were all featuring white children’s having blue eyes, long straight hair that i learned 
to crave for.

I really wanted to see what’s there for us since I never came across it before. With that in mind 

I truly looked forward to shop around for books that portray the world my son lives in. We´ve 

been visiting a lot of bookstores, checked around on the net without any results, despites 

some written in English, don’t think Leo is ready for some English lessons yet.

Very upsetting. But we didn’t give up. After having no luck at the bookstore we decided to check with

 the library, at least they must have some book that illustrates a baby of colour. We searched, searched

 and searched.  No books! Frustrated, I headed to the librarian and asked why they don´t offer such books. 

The librarian gave us some weird explanations.... don’t even want to go into it at this instant. Eventually, 

she looked at me with a big questions mark on her head explaining that probably it’s simply because there 

are no big demand for such books. How can there be no demand for such books is that really the whole 

truth? I mean are there not a single person, any black parents in Sweden demanding
 books that illustrate their brownbaby.

Where are the African Children's Books? Yes, where are they? For what

 I just experienced they are not where they should be, in every child's hands.

Why does it concern me this much; Well I do believe that this kind of books offers an opportunity

 for identification to the reading child, but not only that, by reading the child also get the ability to think 

"beyond" and broader. We need pictures and stories that show our children that they do exist with African 

colours. Just like any other kid. I think it´s extremely important that our children need to open a book and

 see black people. But it´s also extremely important that European children can open a book and 

read about black children to.

Not being able to offer my son this, (not giving up yet) of course saddens me, and it

 also opened up for a reality that no parent wishes their child; that my son already being learnt how to

 live in exclusion. The question is. What are you as a parent doing about it, what´s you’re opinion

 as a parent and how can we make it better?

I am grateful for some book recommendations if anyone managed to get hold

 of one. This post got longer than I expected it to. But now at least I got the chance

 to get out my BIG frustration.