“There are other girls out there too who are stowing away in their books because the outside world’s not that great.”

Meet Marley Dias.

This 11-year-old wonder from New Jersey got sick of reading books about "white boys and their dogs," so she started a campaign called #1000BlackGirlBooks that aims to collect children’s books featuring black girls as main characters.

Andrea Cipriani Mecchi

Marley visited the BuzzFeed podcast Another Round to talk about some of the books that have inspired her. Hosts Tracy Clayton and Heben Nigatu, plus writer Ashley Ford shared their picks as well. Listen here!

Tar Beach by Faith Ringgold

"My grandmother specifically took very good care to find me books with little black girls in them. She had a hard time, so she ended up actually having me read a lot of books about animals, because she couldn't find too many books with young black girls as protagonists. Two of the books that she had for me and taught me to read with were Amazing Grace and Tar Beach, which was a really beautiful dreamscape book that I still think about a lot." - Ashley Ford

Crown Publishers

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