Rudine Sims Bishop

Rudine Sims Bishop, professor emerita at Ohio State University, has been referred to as the "mother of" multicultural children's literature for her sociologically groundbreaking American children's literature research.

Biography Bishop was born in Pottsville, Pennsylvania, about a hundred miles northwest of Philadelphia. The public schools in her community were not racially segregated, though Bishop noted that professional opportunities were limited for African Americans at the time. Bishop attended West Chester State Teachers College, which is now West Chester University. She completed her master's degree in education from the University of Pennsylvania. She later obtained her doctorate from Wayne State University in Detroit.

She taught elementary school for a few years. At the college and university level, Bishop taught reading, curriculum development, and children's literature at Morgan State College in Baltimore, the University of Massachusetts Amherst, the State University of New York at Buffalo and Ohio State University , where Bishop specialized in children's literature, particularly African American children's literature.

Bishop has credited a few influences on her evolving work around multicultural children's literature. The first influence came when one of her freshman college roommates, Patricia Grasty Gaines, introduced her to Marguerite de Angeli's Bright April (1946), the first children's book Bishop read with characters that looked and experienced community life similar to her own. The next memorable occasion happened while Bishop was a graduate student at Wayne State University. Here she first encountered a large collection of African American children's literature. Bishop later recalled, "...it was the first time I had seen so many children's books about African Americans together in one place. I remember wanting to read them all, see what they were like, what sorts of topics and themes were dealt with, and how African Americans were represented. That was one of the threads that eventually led to my interest in multicultural literature..." In 2016 and 2017, Bishop chaired the jury committee.

Bishop was a member of the 1999 Caldecott Medal Selection Committee as well as a member of 1992 Newbery Medal Selection Committee.

Bishop was also one of three members on the Boston Globe Horn Book Award Committee for 1987-1988 and 2003–2004.

In 2017, Bishop received the Coretta Scott King–Virginia Hamilton Award for Lifetime Achievement award.

Students Former students of Bishop include: Dr. Jonda C. McNair, the Charlotte S. Huck Endowed Professor of Children's Literature at The Ohio State University. Dr. Cynthia Tyson, Professor in the Department of Teaching and Learning at The Ohio State University.