A freelance artist who illustrates children's readers received a set of "multicultural" instructions running to ten pages, single-spaced. In one of the pictures resulting from these instructions, the hero is a Hispanic boy. There are black twins (one girl, one boy), an overweight Oriental boy, a Native American girl, and a Caucasian girl born with a congenital malformation that gave her only three fingers on one hand. The Hispanic boy's parents could not have jobs that would seem stereotypical, so they had to be white-collar workers and eat non-Hispanic food—"spaghetti and meat balls and a salad." The editor even specified to the artist what kind of lettuce should be in the salad: "Make sure it's not iceberg: it should be something nice like endive." There also had to be a picture of a senior citizen—jogging.

†