In discussions about representation in children’s literature, the tone often turns solemn.
Educators and institutions treat these books with the seriousness they deserve, hoping they will correct historical omissions, challenge stereotypes, and ensure that every child sees themselves reflected in the school library. All of this is necessary work. But it has also shaped a particular expectation: that culturally diverse books must teach something.
What we rarely ask is whether those books allow children to feel something beyond reverence. And whether the representation we provide reflects the way children actually live.
Most culturally diverse children’s books fall into three familiar categories: the historical story,
the holiday story, and the explanatory story. These books have their place, and many are
beautifully written. But they’re often tied to a specific moment on the calendar or a specific
learning objective. They appear when the curriculum schedule demands them, not when a child simply wants a good story.
The result? Children may come to associate their cultural identity with instruction rather than
imagination.
Contrast that with the way most children experience the world. Kids move through their days
guided by curiosity, humour, minor chaos, and the constantly renewing sense that anything might happen. They’re wondering things like “how many dogs can fit on a trampoline?”, or “why is my sock wet?” Identity is woven into those experiences, but it isn’t the central plot thread. It’s the backdrop — the home they come from, the food on the table, the rhythms of daily life. It matters deeply, but it is not the only thing happening.
This gap between how representation is typically offered and how children actually live is where cultural joy emerges as an essential concept.
What Cultural Joy Means
Cultural joy describes stories in which identity is present but not heavy. It’s not the topic of the
book; it’s the context. These are stories where children from underrepresented groups get to be fully themselves (imaginative, flawed, exuberant, messy, brave, uncertain) without the
burden of explaining who they are or why their culture matters. In these narratives, cultural identity is not something to be taught; it is something to be lived.
This subtle shift has enormous implications for how children build both self-understanding and empathy. It signals that they belong not because someone has made room for them during a designated cultural month, but because they are naturally part of the story landscape.
Emotional Vocabulary: The Missing Piece in Representation
Children learn how to understand their feelings — and which feelings are available to them —
by seeing those emotions modelled. Literature provides them with emotional templates: joy, fear, triumph, disappointment, mischief, courage, frustration, and delight. But when culturally diverse books emphasize only the serious end of that emotional spectrum (struggle, reverence, or solemnity, for example), they unintentionally narrow the palette. But joyful, imaginative, everyday stories can broaden it again.
When a child sees someone who shares their identity navigating the same range of emotions as any other character (from silliness to determination to surprise) they absorb an unspoken but powerful message: My culture includes all of this too. I’m not limited to certain kinds of stories or certain kinds of feelings.
This matters profoundly for identity formation. It also matters for how peers perceive one
another. When the only stories students encounter about a cultural group are tied to historical trauma or formal celebration, it reduces real-life complexity. Joyful stories restore balance. They show that cultural identity is not fragile, distant, or overly precious — it is robust, textured, and fully alive.
The Problem with Occasion Books
Education systems often rely on “occasion books” — texts brought out during holidays or
heritage units. Again, these books are useful and often excellent. But because they are tied to the calendar, they reinforce the idea that certain identities appear only at specific times.
Cultural joy breaks that pattern. These are books children reach for at any moment, not because they align with an annual event, but because the stories are good. They are funny, surprising, heartfelt, chaotic, familiar. They function as year-round representation, not seasonal instruction. And because they are rooted in everyday life rather than symbolic moments, they bridge cultural differences without flattening them. A child does not need to share a protagonist’s cultural background to appreciate a story built on imagination and humour. This universality is not achieved by erasing cultural identity, but by presenting it within the broad emotional and narrative range of childhood.
Imagine your students reading a story about a kid fighting a 20-foot-tall piece of toast that is
terrorizing the city. The kid in the story is Jewish, and maybe he’s using some tricks he learned
at Hebrew school, but your non-Jewish students aren’t preoccupied with that—they’re thinking about how they would fight the toast alongside the Jewish kid in the story. They’re approaching the adventure from the same side of the table as the protagonist, rather than looking across the table at him as an object of study.
Why Cultural Joy Matters in Today’s Classrooms
Schools are navigating a complex landscape — polarized discourse, rising anxieties, increasingly diverse classrooms, and students who are deeply attuned to belonging. In this environment, the stories we offer children do more than reflect who they are. They shape how they understand one another.
Cultural joy contributes to that work by:
- supporting positive identity development
- providing a counterweight to trauma-centered narratives
- normalizing cultural presence rather than spotlighting cultural difference
- helping teachers diversify classroom reading without framing identity solely as a topic to be examined
From an equity perspective, it’s a shift from inclusion-as-recognition to inclusion-as-experience. Children shouldn’t only be seen during the moments when their identity is on the curriculum. They should be seen in the full range of stories that make up childhood.
A Broader Vision for Representation
Representation in children’s literature will always include historical, heritage, and explanatory
texts. These are essential. But they cannot be the only stories we offer. To serve students well, representation must include room for joy; not as an accessory, but as a central component of cultural life. When we do that, we invite children not merely to understand identity, but to inhabit it. Not merely to recognize cultural difference, but to celebrate cultural
vitality.
The future of diverse kidlit isn’t just about adding more cultural categories to a bookshelf. It’s
about giving every child the chance to see themselves in stories that feel expansive, imaginative, and emotionally rich. That’s cultural joy.
And it has a vital place in our classrooms — all year long.
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Rick Duchalski is the founder of Mad Dreidel Press and author of Leah’s Magic Dreidel (2025),
Don’t Unbraid the Challah! (2026) and Carl (2026).
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