Sonny Figueroa / The New York TimesThe childrenís book ìA Fine Dessert: Four Centuries, Four Families, One Delicious Treatî has met growing criticism from those who say an eight-page sequence set on a South Carolina plantation in 1810 unwittingly perpetuates a rosy vision of slavery.

“A Fine Dessert” by Emily Jenkins; illustrated by Sophie Blackall; (Schwartz & Wade, 44 pages, $17.99)

Diversity has been a burning topic in children’s publishing in recent years, as editors, authors and librarians have debated how to tell more inclusive and accurate stories about America’s past and present.

Now a picture book for young readers that touches on slavery has ignited controversy, with some critics charging that it unwittingly perpetuates a rosy vision of that institution.

The book, “A Fine Dessert,” written by Emily Jenkins and illustrated by Sophie Blackall, shows four children at different points in history making a blackberry fool with a parent. The parallel stories highlight both technological changes in kitchens and the shifting social relationships that determined just who did the cooking.

Released this year by Schwartz & Wade, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, and intended for ages 4 to 8, the book has won rave reviews — School Library Journal called it “simply delectable” — and last week was named one of the 10 New York Times Best Illustrated Children’s Books, chosen annually by a panel of independent judges.

But “A Fine Dessert” has met growing criticism from those who say that an eight-page sequence set on a South Carolina plantation in 1810 puts too sugary a coating on slavery. The sequence shows an enslaved mother and her young daughter making dessert and serving it to their owner’s family before hiding in a closet to “lick the bowl clean.” In some images, the daughter is smiling.

Last week, Jenkins posted an apology online, saying that she would donate her writing fee to the campaign We Need Diverse Books.

“I have come to understand that my book, while intended to be inclusive and truthful and hopeful, is racially insensitive,” she said in the statement, posted at the blog Reading While White. “I own that and am very sorry.”

In an author’s note in the book, Jenkins — a best-selling author who has written about the importance of parents’ seeking out more diverse books — said she wanted to acknowledge history in full.

“Even though there is by no means space to explore the topic of slavery fully,” she wrote, “I wanted to represent American life in 1810 without ignoring that part of our history.”

Blackall, whose more than 20 books have been praised for their inclusive imagery, echoed the sentiment in a blog post defending the book. Children, she said, have reacted particularly strongly to the scene of the mother and daughter hiding in the closet.

They “are horrified at how unfair it is,” she said. It conveys “a complete lack of freedom.”

The author and illustrator, who are white, declined to comment for this article. But their publisher said in a statement that the goal had been “a book that parents, teachers and librarians could use as a springboard for deeper, meaningful conversations about our history.”

While “A Fine Dessert” has found a number of defenders, including some African-Americans, detractors say that the book — which contains the words “master” and “plantation,” but no overt reference to, or explanation of, slavery itself — leaves out too much.

Edi Campbell, a reference librarian at Indiana State University who blogs about children’s literature, credited Jenkins and Blackall with admirable intentions, but said that the meaning of the image of the mother and daughter hiding in the closet would probably be lost on its audience.

“To a 4-year-old or an 8-year-old, that just looks like fun,” said Campbell, who is African-American. Enslaved people, she added, would not necessarily have “risked their lives for a dessert.”

Ebony Elizabeth Thomas, an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education who has studied how schoolchildren respond to books about slavery, called the scene “degrading” and said that the book — whose subtitle is “Four Centuries, Four Families, One Delicious Treat” — suggested a misleading equivalency between the enslaved family and the others.

“Publishers are not thinking enough about who is reading these books,” she added. “Imagine reading ‘A Fine Dessert’ to a classroom in Philadelphia that is 90 percent African-American. How are those kids going to feel?”

Just what kind of information about slavery to present to children, particularly very young ones, is a difficult question. While a few illustrated books, like Tom Feelings’ wordless 1996 volume, “The Middle Passage,” deal bluntly with slavery’s deepest horrors, most titles for children tend to focus on subjects like the Underground Railroad or inspiring tales of enslaved people actively struggling against oppression.

But even heroic stories hold pitfalls. Alvina Ling, the editor-in-chief of Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, recalled intense discussions around the order of the words in the subtitle of “Dave the Potter: Artist, Poet, Slave,” a 2010 picture book about a real former slave from South Carolina who created ceramics inscribed with his verses.

“Even though he was a slave, we wanted him to be seen first as an artist,” Ling said.

Don Tate, the author and illustrator of “Poet: The Remarkable Story of George Moses Horton,” about a North Carolina slave who taught himself to read and write and in 1829 became the first African-American to publish a book in the South, said in an email that children’s books about slavery needed to show suffering.