As a Cuban-American teacher, Katherine "Kate" Bundy thought it was important to show her students a true depiction of children's books in Spanish. But she faced one big obstacle.
"I found it was difficult to find Spanish language children's books that were not portraying Latinos in a stereotypical or negative manner," said Bundy, lecturer in the Spanish department at the University of North Georgia (UNG).
So she started searching for good children's books depicting more authentic culture for her young students. She then applied critical race theory to children's literature, which led to a paper and now a publication in a book.
Bundy's paper "Was it All a Dream? Chicana/o Children and Mestiza Consciousness in Super Cilantro Girl and Tata’s Gift" is a chapter in the book "Voices of Resistance: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Chicana Children's Literature." Published in 2018, the book was edited by Laura Alamillo, Larissa M. Mercado-Lopez and Cristina Herrera.
"I felt happy," Bundy said about the article being accepted and published. "I felt inspired to do my best work."
Now Bundy is trying to inspire her UNG students by continuing to bring examples of Spanish children's books into her classroom.
"One of the first things they notice is not all of them are written in Spanish," she said. "That ties into my research of not all Latinos are Spanish speakers."
