The first essay in this publication reports on an assessment of the way Asian culture is portrayed in nearly 300 textbooks in common use in the United States. The assessment revealed that the texts fail to represent Asia fairly; the most serious problems are the underlying, purely Western yardsticks with which the majority of the texts approach Asia, their failure to present Asian life authentically, and the absence of any significant amount of Asian source materials. The second essay deals with sex bias in books for children. It first presents an annotated bibliography of significant studies on sex bias in children's books and summarizes the main findings of the studies, which suggest that females in children's books are portrayed in stereotyped roles or are conspicuously absent. The essay then reports on an investigation of the extent of sex bias in more than 200 books recommended for children. The male bias reported on in the annotated studies was supported by the results of the investigation. (GW)