Marley Dias was living a little black girl’s version of “Groundhog Day.”

She was a voracious reader, but she was also getting her fill of the same story over and over again.

White boy and dog teach words. White boy and dog go on adventures. White boy and dog avert disaster. White boy and dog come of age together.

It had become a predictable set up. What Marley wasn’t expecting was that a complaint to her mother about the predicament would be turned back on her in the form of a question: If you’re so bothered by it, what are you going to do about it?

And indeed, something needed to be done. Of the 3,500 children’s books written in 2017 and made available to public schools & libraries from U.S. publishers, only 319 featured black main characters and only 116 were by black American authors.

For a 10-year-old girl, Marley approached her choice thoughtfully:

“Option 1: focus on me, get myself more books; have my dad take me to Barnes and Noble and just be done, live my perfect life in suburban New Jersey.

Option 2: find some authors, beg them to write more black girl books so I’d have some of my own, special editions, treat myself a bit,” she quipped.

“Or… Option 3: start a campaign that collects books with black girls as the main characters, donate them to communities, develop a resource guide to find those books, talk to educators and legislators about how to increase the pipeline of diverse books, and lastly, write my own book, so that I can see black girl books collected and I can see my story reflected in the books I have to read.”

It goes without saying which one Marley chose.

Her #1000BlackGirlBooks movement started in 2015 as a drive to collect and distribute 1,000 books featuring black girls and women to underprivileged girls at a handful of schools. By early 2018, Marley had collected and distributed over 11,000 books worldwide. That same year, for her 13th birthday, she added one more book to the list: her own.

The book Marley Dias Gets It Done And So Can You! was written to empower girls who want to formulate their own plans “for social change, motivate people, and give strategies for the ones who need to stand up and do something and speak out—because I can guarantee [they]’re not the only person who feels that way.”

And she shows no signs of stopping there. She’s recently become ELLE.com’s youngest Editor-in-Residence, using her platform to interview writers/creators of color and share their stories with the girls who need to read them. She’s been recognized on the 2018 Forbes Under 30 list and honored with the Smithsonian Magazine 2017 American Ingenuity Award as well. And of course, she’s steadily amassed more books along the way. Marley plans to collect and distribute 1 million black girl books globally, and has created a searchable “Black Girl Book Guide” along with a companion app she’s currently developing to make it easier for EVERYONE to explore “a world where modern black girls are the main characters — not invisible, not just the sidekick. A world where black girls are free to be complicated, honest, human; to have adventures and emotions unique just to them. A world where black girls’ stories matter.”

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