This book describes the history and characteristics of ethnic and multicultural children's literature in the U.S., as well as related materials published elsewhere. It relates in great detail the people, businesses, organizations, and institutions that create, disseminate, promote, critique, and collect these materials. Author Donna Gilton gives a detailed history of U.S. multicultural and ethnic children's literature throughout several historic periods, relating these developments to general social and political U.S. history. Chapters illustrate characteristics of U.S. multicultural children's books, the major issues in the field, and multicultural initiatives and mainstream responses, while also providing outlines of research possibilities in the field and suggesting other groups of people who should be emphasized more in the future. In doing all this, Multicultural and Ethnic Children's Literature in the United States brings together valuable and scattered information for the busy and involved librarians, teachers, parents, publishers, distributors, and community leaders who wish to use and promote this material with children.