think ethnic

A blogger is conducting a guess the race experiment: she's asking for excerpts from books to see if people can guess what race/species are being characterized. This isn't specifically children's lit related, but I thought it might be interesting, since I am always curious about the ways authors try to subtly indicate race or other differences. The most popular method in children's literature for the middle grades for the last fifteen years or so has been to give conspiciously ethnic last names, which always feels a little awkward to me, because how often do real-life kids talk about their friends by their full names?