Stop Whitewashing Book Covers

Dear Publishers,

In light of the recent controversies over the covers of "Magic Under Glass", "Liar", and "The Mysterious Benedict Society", we the customers and staff of Left Bank Books in St. Louis want you to know that we will buy books with people of color on the cover no matter what race we ourselves are. Please also understand the following:

1). Whitewashing is not only wrong, it is offensive and detrimental to children of color. We ask you to make sure that you are accurately representing the race of the characters on the covers of your books.

2). We want to see more books featuring children of all skin tones and races on the covers of your books. We want to see more than simply white and light-skinned children in books, and we want to see books about children of color that have covers in which the children are clearly visible and clearly not white.

3). We want to read more books written by authors of color, and more books featuring children of color as the central character.

4). We want to see more fantasy, sci-fi, horror, mystery, romance, adventure, realistic- and other genre-fiction featuring children of color as the main character. There is a wonderful selection of historical fiction about children of color which should absolutely continue to be the case but we want to see more than just historical fiction.

5). We would like to see some books where the main character is of-color but that fact is incidental to the plot, instead of being a problem that needs to be resolved. We want to read more books about children of color who go on adventures unrelated to their skin color.

Thank you for your attention to this issue and thank you for all of the wonderful books you have already published about people of color, and with people of color on the cover. We look forward to reading and buying many multicultural books from you in the future.