We've shared before about Marley Dias, the New Jersey middle-school student who saw a dearth of books representing young black girls and decided to do something about it. She's collected thousands of books so far featuring black female protagonists—far exceeding even her own ambitious goal. And now, Dias has been named an editor-in-residence for Elle.com, complete with Marley Mag, a publication inspired and spearheaded by Dias. We're so excited to see where this new opportunity leads: for Dias as well as for black girls and others everywhere who will now discover the strength, diversity, complexity, intelligence, joy, depth and more that black girls bring to books—and the world.

nj.com - When Marley Dias started her #1000BlackGirlBooks social media campaign to collect books featuring black girls as main characters, she didn't expect to exceed her goal of a thousand books.

Dias, an Essex County middle-schooler, came up with the campaign last year after becoming frustrated with the lack of black, female main characters in books she had to read for school, the ones filled with "white boys and their dogs."

But the effort drew a surplus of books — more than 7,000 so far — and a significant amount of attention from national media. Marley wound up a guest on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show" and later got to meet Oprah Winfrey and Michelle Obama.

Now the 11-year-old from West Orange has been made an editor-in-residence for Elle.com, which on Monday launched Marley Mag, a zine of her very own.

"When you see a character you can connect with, if they learn a specific lesson, you're more likely to apply that to your life," Dias told NJ Advance Media in January when talking about the impetus behind her book campaign. Dias, then a sixth grader at Thomas A. Edison Middle School, said her ultimate goal was to edit her own pop culture and lifestyle magazine.

Marley Dias loves to read. But the New Jersey 11-year-old—who, among other things, has traveled to Ghana to help feed orphans and received a grant from Disney—has made it her latest passion to collect children's books featuring black female protagonists so she and other students can have role models in fiction that include people like themselves.The project, #1000BlackGirlBooks, saw its beginning when Dias commented to her mother that she was "sick of reading about white boys and dogs." Determined to show that there are wonderful black girl protagonists—and to introduce the books to schools and show that reading is enhanced by including diverse perspectives—Dias set out to collect 1,000 such books by the beginning of February. She's currently at 4,000 books and counting.

Dias spoke with NPR's Morning Edition about her effort and the importance of students being able to identify with protagonists.

"I think it's important in general for kids to be reading books with diversity. When you read about a character that you can connect with, you'll remember the things that they learned, so if I like hair bows, and the character I'm reading about likes hair bows; I'll remember what he or she learned in that book because I have something in common with them," Dias told Morning Edition's David Greene.

Read an excerpt and listen to the interview, and click through to check out the rest of the article, including book recommendations from Dias.

NPR Ed - (Excerpt) Black girls, like Marley, were almost never the main character.

What she was noticing is actually a much bigger issue: Fewer than 10 percent of children's books released in 2015 had a black person as the main character, according to a yearly analysis by the Cooperative Children's Book Center at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. And while the number of children's books about minorities has increased in the past 20 years, many classroom libraries have older books.

Last fall, Marley decided to do something about it. She set a goal of collecting 1,000 books about black girls by the beginning of February, and #1000blackgirlbooks was born.

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