WCU Magazine Summer 2026

Pre-service teachers at WCU are introduced to the phrase “mirrors, windows, and sliding glass doors” in their classes, which addresses the idea that books should allow children to see themselves as well as others in the books they read. What they may not know is that the noted scholar who originated that phrase also earned her teaching degree at the University.

Now, Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop ’59 — often called the mother of multicultural children’s literature — is sharing her legacy with current education students with the donation of her extensive collection of children’s literature to the University Libraries. The Rudine Sims Bishop Children’s Literature Collection includes more than 900 picture and chapter books representing many of the leading children’s book authors of the last 50 years.

The collection helps the library meet an important goal. “We try to make sure that we have a diverse collection overall and that we’re representing different voices throughout our collections,” says Dr. Jill Dixon, dean of University libraries. “This has helped us with that goal.”

Dr. Bishop, professor emerita in the College of Education and Human Ecology at the Ohio State University, is a renowned scholar who has dedicated most of her career to examining how African Americans are represented in children’s books and the impact of that representation.

Her groundbreaking book Shadow and Substance: African American Experience in Contemporary Children’s Fiction was published in 1982. It was followed by the 1990 essay “Mirrors, Windows, and Sliding Glass Doors,” which appeared in Perspectives: Choosing and Using Books for the Classroom. In the article, Dr. Bishop noted that children’s literature provides opportunities for children to see their own identity reflected or that it can be a means to better understand others – as if glimpsed through a window or entered as if walking through a sliding glass door. In addition, she noted that oftentimes for children of color, books have functioned mainly as windows.

She was awarded the 2017 Coretta Scott King-Virginia Hamilton Award for Lifetime Achievement by the American Library Association. Earlier she was inducted into the Reading Hall of Fame and received the International Reading Association’s Arbuthnot Award. Dr. Bishop also chaired the Coretta Scott King Award Jury that awards prizes to African American authors and illustrators of exceptional books focused on the African American experience and served on the selection committees for the Newbery and Caldecott awards — the most prestigious recognitions for children’s literature.

Dr. Bishop is respected and beloved among children’s book authors – a fact affirmed by the personal inscriptions found in many of her donated books. MacArthur Fellow and National Book Award Winner Jacqueline Woodson inscribed her 2018 book The Day You Begin with the words “For Rudine: I. Adore. You!! Jacqueline Woodson.” In a 30th anniversary edition of To Be A Slave, a runner up for the Newbery Award, author Julius Lester inscribed “To my friend and colleague, Rudine, Keep on keepin’ on! Much love, Julius 4-14-00." Those books, as well as other signed books and numerous first editions, are now housed in the library’s Special Collections.

Dr. Jonda C. McNair uses Dr. Bishop’s famous metaphor to describe working with her as a doctoral student. Dr. McNair, currently the Charlotte S. Huck Endowed Professor of Children’s Literature at Ohio State, says, “She was a mirror for me and a window in that she opened me up to the possibility that I could be a professor of children’s literature.” She remembers her as “a true intellectual” who held her students to high standards.

By contributing her book collection, Dr. Bishop would want the West Chester community “to engage in the habit of reading,” Dr. McNair says. “As they read, I would hope that they would think about her analogy and recognize that it’s important, not just to read about [people] like yourself, to also read about others.”