WELCOME
Hi there! We are the co-founders of Stories of a Colorful World (SOCW), Kanika Mobley and Vanessa Mitchell. We met at Spelman College (Abby Hall💙💙💙) many moons ago and bonded over our love of family, travel, and service. As we embarked upon our careers and started families, we were always committed to the shared belief that the children in our lives should dare to embrace their authenticity.
As a teacher, Kanika understood the value of reading. She reveled in watching kids find joy in listening to and reading books. Vanessa was that auntie always showing up to holidays with books for her nieces and nephews.
There was just one problem. Why was it so difficult to find books that mirrored the kids in our lives? While there is a clear disparity in the number of high-quality children’s books that feature Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) as main characters (only 36% to be exact), we believe that parents and educators shouldn’t be relegated to the one “ethnic” aisle in the bookstore or overwhelmed by the never-ending search engine rabbit hole of book lists. We wanted to help, so we’ve done the work of researching, sourcing, and testing out quality books that instill a love of reading in your young people. We’re ready to help you diversify your library and fill it with books you’ll love for generations.
We are so grateful you’ve stopped by and hope you find something extraordinary while you’re here.
HAPPY READING!
Love,
Kanika and Vanessa
We are committed to increasing access to children’s books that show diverse representations of BIPOC characters, highlight authors from those same diverse groups, and instill a love of reading in our young people that will help them grow into life-long learners. We aim to put more diverse books into the hands of young readers by donating a percentage of our books to classrooms across the country.
You can support us by sharing our story and following us on social media: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or TikTok.
Thank you for your support!