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They say we’re not supposed to judge books by their covers, but it was the cover that caught my attention.

The first time I saw a Bluford High book I was wandering through my middle school library looking for something to kill the rest of my time for the day. Eventually, I found a shelf that displayed soulful illustrations of brown faces on their covers. One was called A Matter of Trust, and pictured a girl in a school hallway holding a notebook close to her chest. I grabbed it along with another titled, Blood Is Thicker. My life changed for the better.

In October 2001, Townsend Press published the first book in the indelible Bluford Series — a collection of teen fiction novels that explored relevant themes of friendship, peer pressure, acceptance, upheaval and more through the stories of young Black and brown characters. Though my 13-year-old self was not conscious of it at the time, I needed to see Black kids like myself portrayed front and center, and my first Bluford book began my love for reading.

20 years after its first print, thousands of readers of color who have come of age can speak to how the series moved them to read, write and imagine. The official site for the series features testimonials by educators from Milwaukee to Long Beach, praising the series for the joy it has brought to generations of young readers.

Like many Bluford readers, I reminisce over my first encounter with the series because it was the first time I read a book I was genuinely interested in. It became a portal to the world of young adult urban literature that I didn’t know existed. Written in an accessible, young, reader-friendly style, the books were short, inspirational and weaved the intertwining stories of various characters, which left kids thirsty for the next one. Devouring all the Bluford books I could eventually led to numerous reads from Kimani Tru and Ni-Ni Simone, and over time, Ashley and JaQuavis, Omar Tyree, Sista Souljah and many others. Those were the kind of books that weren’t taught in the classroom but showed the magic of figurative language, story structure and thematic elements.

It’s no surprise that The Bluford Series was endorsed by the American Library Association (ALA) and the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA), as well as earning a distribution deal with Scholastic in 2007.

When I read Bluford books I wasn’t being taught literature, I was experiencing it. It’s scary to think that the only reason I came across the series is because I was receiving punishment for being tardy to class too many times. What was supposed to have been a disciplinary action that interrupted my learning resulted in some of the most fun and enrichment I’d ever had in school. And when considering that, as many have pointed out, some of the most prolific Bluford Series writers (including Paul Langan and Anne Schraff) are white, the conversation about how the series promoted racial representation in youth literature becomes more complicated.

Addressing this is not to injure the aforementioned or erase the work of Black and brown Bluford writers like Ben Alirez, Karyn Langhorne Folan or Tanya Savory. Acknowledging that some of my favorite stories centering Black teens were written by white authors doesn’t change the fact that those stories resonated with my younger self, nor does it diminish their value. But it does make me wonder whether I would identify the limited settings, circumstances and stereotypes today that I didn’t see then.

It also makes me question the powers within the publishing industry, which led to mostly white people pushing the pen to create educational resources for adolescents of color. Langan himself, who is the nephew of Townsend Press founder John Langan, has spoken out against the ways that mainstream publishing has historically “refused to acknowledge or embrace young readers of color” and conceived the idea for The Bluford Series after running a 1997 summer reading program for eighth-graders in Philadelphia.

“We had fun that summer, but I discovered our students, mostly African American teens, seemed uninterested in the titles teachers recommended. Instead, they gravitated toward novels set in cities, featuring protagonists that looked like them (a rarity in the YA world in the late 1990s),” Langan recalled in a 2015 interview with the Juvenile Justice Literacy Project. “The kids schooled us. The lesson was simple: if we want young adults to pay attention to books, we need to give them books that pay attention to them.”

So, if The Bluford Series was an attempt to encourage urban youth to read and made a generational impact doing just that, what would more access to literature starring Black and brown youth, crafted by Black and brown writers, do for young readers today?

Literacy is a human and constitutional right, but Black children are continuing to suffer. In 2019, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) released reading test results for eighth-graders nationwide, which confirmed that a dismal 47% of Black students and 38% of Hispanic students are reading below a proficient level. If that isn’t horrifying enough, figures for our Black boys continue to spell a crisis, with more than half of Black male eighth-graders reading below basic levels in 2020. In 2017, 75% of Black boys in California did not meet state reading standards.

The contributing factors to these disparities cited by researchers and educators include flaws in traditional reading instruction and the policing of Black students. With journalists giving the issue the attention it deserves, some educators have rung the alarm for an all-hands-on-deck approach by broadening school curriculums.

Celebrating the contributions of The Bluford Series gives us the opportunity to reflect on how literacy among young people of color has changed and stayed the same over time. It also allows us to renew appreciation for literary organizations and authors that are serving our communities while recommitting focus to knocking down the systemic barriers that block access to quality education and good books.

Our kids deserve better and if nothing else, The Bluford Series proved there is no such thing as a reluctant reader. There are only reluctant systems that need to be torn down.

Sytonia R

Writing since January 2021 · 2 stories contributed