Introduction  Struggle for librarians and teachers to purchase, find, and use multicultural young adult books either in the classroom or to promote reading among minorities.  Lack of diversity can deter teenagers who are of color, or other cultures than the mainstream white majority from reading.  Since the population of minorities is rising, young adults need to be able to read about characters like them, who share the same culture and cultural issues with growing up and being Latino, Chinese, African, or Native American. Purpose & Goals Learning Outcomes 1.Recognize the need for diversity in young adult literature 2. Understand importance of making diverse young adult collections in school and libraries 3.Necessity of characters in young adult literature that are of other cultures. Why have Diverse Collections? Having diverse and multicultural young adult collections:  helps librarians to learn more about minority youths  provides multicultural programming  resources to help diverse teenagers  encourages diverse teens to read Research Continued… Bista:  Can authors of outside groups be just as reliable to provide authentic multicultural material as authors of ethnic groups? Bittner:  Further research in the field is necessary  “any such characters in literature for [two- spirit identity youth] is nearly absent” (Bittner, p. 19). Chen:  Addressed authors, teachers, librarians, and then general public to open up their eyes to lack of authentic and accurate materials in youth literature.  Wants Asian cultures to be accurately portrayed, settings to exist outside of just China  Wants Asian-American children to understand how much respect their descendants deserve, and what they went through during the Second World War. Hood:  Youth are so influenced by perceptions of themselves by they what they see, read, and hear  Black youth are forced to read fantasy and science fiction with only white characters (Hood, 2009). Loh:  Called for the need to create a “reliable and research-based tool” (Loh, 57) that helps to create authentic Asian-American children’s literature. Websites such as VOYA, Teen Librarian Toolbox, ALA, and YALSA are great resources for learning about YA multicultural literature. Here are the links for these websites:     Conclusions Researchers have found that there is a necessity for multicultural YA literature in schools and libraries, but for these materials to hit the shelves there needs to be authentic and ethnic authors to write these books. Publishers need to look for authors that can represent minority cultures and portray them accurately and have characters that are representative of today’s diverse youth. Online Resources  The purpose is to bring light to the lack of books for young adults who are not the mainstream white majority.  Exposing the lack of multicultural literature in young adult literature will help librarians to look for more diversified books and to create a more diverse young adult collection.  Needs to be a change in young adult literature that introduces multicultural books and authors into their libraries and classrooms. Lack of Diversity in Young Adult Literature Danielle Burns University at Buffalo Research Koss and Teale:  Only twenty percent of these books were considered multicultural and only used multicultural characters in supporting roles.  Books were predominantly fiction.  A shift from coming to age stories to finding themselves and dealing with the “typical teenage life” (Koss and Teale, p. 567). Collins:  Aside from Myers and Draper there still aren’t many black authors that can create characters for black young adults to read about in young adult literature.