We started The Conscious Kid in 2016 after walking into our local public library in Long Beach, CA with our 1 year old son. We asked the librarian for all the books featuring Black characters and after 30 minutes, they came back with 3 books. Two were written by white authors and the 3rd featured a little girl praying to God to not have “nappy hair”. We started doing our own search for books by Black authors and found it challenging to identify titles and when we did, we were finding a lot of deficit narratives and stereotypes that we wouldn’t want to expose our kids to. We kept doing research on this and realized that this was an issue that other friends and parents were having and was rooted in systemic issues in the publishing industry. We decided to start identifying and critically reading children’s books so we could highlight great titles that other families like ourselves may not know about. 

We featured these titles on our Instagram and social media pages and also created a lending library where we would send physical copies of the titles to families and teachers at the beginning of each month and they would send them back in the enclosed postage-paid envelope at the end of each month (think early Netflix when they used to send DVD’s to your house!). As we grew and evolved we developed the capacity to make diverse children’s books and other educational resources freely accessible to teachers and administrators in schools across the country. To date, we have donated over 350,000 anti-racist and anti-bias books to more than 9,000 schools in all 50 states.

We also offer training workshops, speaking engagements, and other programs to equip educators, corporate and organizational leaders, and content creators with the skills and resources they need to amplify the voices, stories, and lived experiences of underrepresented communities. For example, we have presented to and led trainings and workshops for prominent entertainment companies like Disney, Disney Jr., Marvel, Paramount, Nickelodeon, Cartoonito, Atomic Cartoons, and YouTube Kids; children’s toy, clothing, and product manufacturers like Play-Doh, Hasbro, Janie and Jack, Gap, FabKids, and Babyganics; professional sports organizations like Major League Baseball (MLB); and other companies like Squarespace and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. 

We also consult on children’s media content and tv shows. We served as the Cultural Consultants for Disney’s Rise Up, Sing Out and a number of Nickelodeon’s shows, including Little Lens from LeBron James’ SpringHill Entertainment, Black Sunshine, and their Kids, Race and Unity special, hosted by Alicia Keys. Our goal is to support anti-bias education and inclusive classroom communities by equipping families, schools, & organizations with impactful resources to increase diverse, equitable representation of people of color and marginalized groups in children’s books, educational curriculum, and popular media.

Because of the online community we have built, when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, we were able to raise and send out over $1,400,000 in direct and immediate COVID-19 rent relief for families across the country, including over $700,000 for Black families and $50,000 for the Black Trans community.