Marley Dias Has A Black Girl Book Database

Too often are the books we read as children full of characters who don’t look like us and are unrelatable. This is especially an issue for early readers and elementary aged students whose classroom libraries are over saturated with stories about wild babysitters and white boys with dogs.

Marley Dias, 11, saw this issue and wanted to do something about it. Her love for books lead her to realize that almost none of the stories available to her had black girls as main characters, so she set out to find some. Her goal was to find 1,000 black girl lead children’s books and set them up in a database so that black girls would no longer have to deal with the struggles of a lack of representation in their readings.

Marley has since expanded to over 4,000 books and is planning to set up a black girl book club and urge school districts to include more diverse readings in youth libraries.

Watch below for more information on her 1,000 Black Girl Books campaign

Go Marley!