http://www.gawker.com/news/publishing/devious-publishing-industry-cons-impressionable-children-into-believing-that-hispanics-are-friendly-wellgroomed-195908.php

I can just hear Lynn Cheney gunning her engines (or perhaps loading her shotgun?) on this one.
Casting able-bodied kids as kids in wheelchairs does rub me the wrong way (I think it creates an unrealistic standard of how ‘handicapped’ people should look), but I don’t think “overdiversifying” the texts is quite as ill as this article might imply.
The publishers here do seem to be missing the point a bit, in that their zeal for avoiding stereotypes seems to reinforce some of them - i.e. the notion that a Latino kid might not be “Latino enough” in appearance so someone else is used instead.
And, to piggyback on that example, exactly how is a kid looking at the photos supposed to be able to distinguish between a Dominican Latino with commonly held African American physical appearance and a Mexican Latino with a “typically Latino” appearance? There’s so many physical characteristics that are common to multiple ethnic groups. I really hope some little kid doesnt’ start saying to himself, Ok, that’s supposed to be a Latino boy, and I’m a Latino boy, but I don’t look like him? Does that mean I’m not a real Latino?
Well. Maybe I should just be happy that the industry is at least trying…
I went to elementary school in the mid to late 80s and during this time all my textbooks were of the mid-to late-70s vintage. My main memory of them is being really annoyed because all of the kids (who were a mix of colors and ethnicities, pretty progressive for the era, really) were wearing really ugly, out of date clothes.
Anyway. Back to work for me.