Rudine Sims Bishop, Professor Emeritus of Education at The Ohio State University, has contributed considerably to the scholarship of multicultural children's literature in general and African American children's literature in particular.
In her earliest work, Shadow and Substance: Afro-American Experience in Contemporary Children's Literature (1982), she details issues ranging from publication to authenticity that continue to stimulate discussions about the research and the classroom usage of multicultural children's literature. Using the allegory of "windows and mirrors" in relation to multicultural children's literature, Sims Bishop noted that children need to be involved with literature which not only allows them to see through the window to the world around them, but also to see themselves mirrored in the texts with which they come into contact.
Her other works include, Presenting Walter Dean Myers (1991), in which Bishop maintained that the author "writes of love and laughter and offers compassion and hope"; Kaleidoscope: A Multicultural Booklist for Grades K–8 (1994), that annotates approximately 400 books published between 1990 and 1992 for children in grades K-8 about African Americans, Asian Americans, Hispanic Americans/Latinos, and Native Americans; and Wonders: The Best Children's Poems of Effie Lee Newsome (1999), perhaps the first African American poet whose work consisted primarily of poems for children.
In her latest book, Free within Ourselves: The Development of African American Children's Literature (2007), Bishop takes the reader historically from the earliest works written with African American children in mind: W.E.B. DuBois' The Brownies Book to John Steptoe's Stevie (a book written for young children that was been labeled a "breakthrough modern African American picture book") to the contemporary award-winning young-adult fiction writer Christopher Paul Curtis and his Bud, Not Buddy, winner of both the Newbery Medal and the Coretta Scott King Author Award. Dr. Bishop's in-depth work in this volume is unparalleled in its highlighting the development of African American literature written for children and young adults.
Her forthcoming work (to be published by Just Us Books), which was inspired by her interest and research into early church documents, is a children's biography of Daniel Alexander Payne, a bishop in the African Methodist Episcopal church who worked to develop programs for an educated ministry and was the first African American president of a U.S. university.
While Rudine Sims Bishop has won many awards, including the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Outstanding Educator in English Language Arts Award and the Arbuthnot Award, given to an outstanding college or university teacher of children's and young adult literature, her life's work has been built on the foundation "that all American children, but especially Black children, need to learn the story of African Americans' struggle on the journey."
Bishop, Rudine Sims. Free within Ourselves: The Development of African American Children's Literature. Greenwood Press, 2007.
Bishop, Rudine Sims. Wonders: The Best Children's Poems of Effie Lee Newsome. Boyds Mills Press, 1999.
Bishop, Rudine Sims. Kaleidoscope: A Multicultural Booklist for Grades K-8. National Council of Teachers of English, 1994.
Bishop, Rudine Sims. Presenting Walter Dean Myers (Twayne's United States Authors Series). Twayne Publishers, 1991.
Sims, Rudine. Shadow and Substance: Afro-American Experience in Contemporary Children's Fiction. National Council of Teachers of English, 1982.
