Why I Chose to Lead With Diverse Characters and Bilingual Text—Even as a White Woman

Why I Chose to Lead With Diverse Characters and Bilingual Text—Even as a White Woman

By: Kristi Cruise

It didn’t just happen once.
It happened over and over again.

During my years leading Promising Pages, organizing free book fairs at Title I schools across Charlotte, I would hear the same question again and again from kids:

“Where are the books that look like me?”

The question was never asked with anger—just quiet hope. A longing. A recognition that something was missing.

And I saw it too.

Of the 20,000 books we might collect and give away in a month, maybe 200 featured characters of color, and that's if we were lucky. That’s 1%. One. Percent.

And while the nonprofit I helped build did everything in its power to collect and distribute EVERY BOOK we could find, we were always short on the ones that mattered most to so many children: the ones that reflected them. 

I’d get calls from teachers weekly, asking us to hold back any diverse books for their classrooms. I always did. But there were never enough. A box or two out of hundreds and hundreds of boxes at the time. 

This isn’t a slam. It’s a spotlight. And it's still happening today. With over 15 years of experience in early literacy distribution and innovation, I am aware that many people are not aware of this: 

In 2019, the Cooperative Children’s Book Center found these breakdowns in U.S.-published children’s books:

Yet 80% of elementary students in Charlotte-Mecklenburg School identify as one or more minority races. So when I stepped away from Promising Pages in 2019 to follow a bigger calling—a vision to help all children thrive through books—I made a promise to myself, and to those kids.

  • My books would look like the world we actually live in.  
Kristi Cruise posing for the Charlotte Business Journal's 40 Under 40 Awards photo shoot in 2018
2018 40 Under 40 Award Shoot

That’s why every book I write today includes:

  • A lead character of color

  • Bilingual or multilingual elements

  • Diverse representation that’s woven in, not tacked on

I may be a white woman, but I am also a ripple maker. A listener. A learner. A part of the solution. And a firm believer that the next generation deserves to see themselves in stories now—not someday.

When I spoke at International House this week to 30 global educators, I shared this journey—and I saw those same nodding heads and wide eyes, this time from the adults. Because this issue isn’t just local. It’s global.

If we want a future that’s more just, inclusive, and imaginative, and results-oriented, we have to start with the books. Because reading is fundamental. 

Readers become leaders. 

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