A Study of Multicultural Content in Notable Children's Songs.

The importance of multicultural content in children's literature is a prominent theme in current professional literature for librarians and educators. Since children's audiovisual materials are a popular part of library collections, the multicultural content of nonprint materials should also be analyzed. This study analyzed the lyrics of 405 songs on 23 sound recordings to determine their multicultural content. The recordings were selected from the influential lists of "Notable Children's Recordings," released from 1975 to 1993 by the Recording Evaluation Committee of the Association for Library Service for Children (ALSC). In general, there was more multicultural content in the recordings published after 1983. African-Americans were the best represented minority group, but there was also representation of Hispanic-Americans, Asian-Americans, and Native Americans. People with disabilities and the Appalachian culture groups were well represented. Elderly people received the harshest treatment of any group represented in the songs; they were portrayed in a stereotypical manner, and were often seen as comical characters. The evaluation sheet and list of recordings analyzed are included in the appendix. (Contains 49 references.) (Author/JLB)