Diversity in Children´s Books - Maeve Friel

I am sure that everyone reading this is aware that Guardian Teen Books recently celebrated a week focussing on diversity in books for children.

By diversity, they mean “books by and about all kinds of people… boys, girls, all different colours, all different races and religions, all different sexualities and all different disabilities and anything else you can think of – so our books don’t leave anyone out.”

Benjamin Zephaniah whose Terror Kid is the Guardian Teen Book Club choice says:

“I love diversity. I love multiculturalism… It makes Britain´s music interesting. It makes our food interesting. It makes our literature interesting and it makes for a more interesting country …   To me it’s not about black, white, Asian; it’s about literature for everybody.”

And there you have it: the criterion must be the quality of the literature. I see little value in writing or publishing books to satisfy some sort of quota to reflect the percentages of ethnic or racial populations or other minorities.

The Guardian published a list of 50 books chosen to represent all manner of cultural diversity, from the amazing Amazing Grace by Mary Hoffman to Oranges in No Man´s Land by Elizabeth Laird.

Here are a few of my favourite books that are outstanding in every way and that also open windows on to different ways of seeing the world.

The Arrival, by Shaun Tan, is a wordless book about the experience of emigration/immigration, following the lonely journey of a man to a new country where everything is different and inexplicable. (He signed my copy when he spoke at a Children´s Books Ireland conference a few years ago and it is one of most treasured possessions.)

Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, is a graphic novel based on her experiences during the cultural and political upheaval of the Iranian revolution after the overthrown of the Shah.  This is a real eye-opener from the first pages showing tiny girls swathed in unfamiliar and unwanted veils in their school playground.

My Dad´s A Birdman, by David Almond, illustrated joyfully and colourfully by Polly Dunbar, is a terrific book about a young girl and her dad who is so overwhelmed with grief that he goes off the rails. It is suffused with love and tenderness and faith in the act of flying as Dad and daughter take part in a madcap and magical contest to sprout wings and fly across the river.  

Wonder by R.J. Palacio is the story of Auggie, a boy with a shocking facial disfigurement who is
starting 5^th grade after years of home schooling: imagine how he is dreading it -  “I won´t describe what I look like. Whatever you´re thinking, it´s probably worse.

I would like to add two more joyful books to the mix:

From Tangerine Books, a wonderful picture book, Larry and Friends,  by Ecuadorian illustrator Carla Torres in collaboration with Belgian/Venezuelan writer Nat Jasper celebrating the modern melting pot that is New York.

Larry, the New York dog, holds a party for all his amazing immigrant friends among them Magpa the pig from Poland who became a tightrope artist, Laila the Iranian entomologist, Edgar the Colombian alligator street musician, Ulises, the Greek cook and  a host of other talented and tolerant newcomers to the city – all apparently based on real people and how they met up.  

The book project was successfully funded by kickstarter – see more about it here.

As you can see, the illustrations are divine - this is Layla, the Iranian entomologist who works at the museum.

And finally, another great classic is The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats (1963), possibly one of the earliest American picture books to feature a young African-American hero – although this is never mentioned in the text. It simply tells the story of a young four year old boy discovering snow in the city for the first time. 

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A First Book For My Grandson, by Paul May

(This is a very topical guest post from Paul May - many thanks to him for producing it with a turn of speed that Mo Farah would envy!)

I have seen various reports recently about the lack of diversity in children’s literature: from SavitaKalhan on this blog, and elsewhere from Malorie Blackman and Bali Rai.  This is about what happened to me.

My grandson is seven months old and the other day my daughter, Emily, asked me if I’d like to buy him his first book.  ‘Yes!’ I thought, ‘That will be fun.  Maybe I’ll get a board book copy of THE BABY’S CATALOGUE.’ It was my son’s first book too.  He’s a few years younger than Emily and it hadn’t been published when she was born.  In fact, Emily more or less grew up with the Ahlbergs. EACH PEACH PEAR PLUM was published the year she was born. I even have her original copy of FUNNYBONES, in which, long before there were any sequels, she had penciled her own ideas for future books.  For example: GETTING MARRIED AND KISSING and BIIING A HOUSE. You see how children engage with picture books? 

Emily’s ideas for FUNNYBONES sequels

So,I took myself off to my local children’s bookshop.  I should say at this point that while I am a white, grey-haired man, and my daughter is white with blue eyes and masses of curly blond hair, my son-in-law is black.  Fallou, my grandson is a perfect, mid-brown mixture.  

On the way to the bookshop I wondered whether maybe THE BABY’S CATALOGUE would be a little old-fashioned.  Then I started to remember that it was full of those wonderful pictures of all kinds of babies and all kinds of mums and dads.  And I remembered all the fun we used to have looking at it, and how Tommy eventually destroyed it; used it up entirely, what with eating it and dragging it around.

Sadly, when I went into the shop they didn’t have a copy, which was a shame.  On the other hand I would enjoy looking through all those picture books for the first time in years, wouldn’t I?  I was sure to find something good.  I must have looked through twenty or thirty board books before it dawned on me - I hadn’t seen a single picture of a child who wasn’t white.

At first I thought this must have been bad luck, so I kept looking.  It wasn’t bad luck.  The board books in this (very well-stocked) bookshop were almost all about white children or animals. I moved on from board books to picture books.  It was the same thing.  Sure, there were some books with black, brown, yellow children, but the others vastly outnumbered them.  I found to my astonishment that I was starting to feel upset.  I guess I’d assumed that in the fifteen years or so since I last looked seriously through the picture book shelves of a bookshop there would have been many more books like THE BABY’S CATALOGUE that depict children of every shape and colour routinely.  I’d seen what Malorie Blackman had said, but there is no substitute for personal experience.  I also know that for many of you reading this it’s already personal, and has been for far too long. And I feel embarrassed that it’s had to become personal for me to feel angry about it.

It can be done – spreads from CLAP HANDS and TICKLE TICKLE by Helen Oxenbury.)

I asked a member of staff about the situation.  She very helpfully found me some books, among them THIS IS OUR HOUSE by Michael Rosen and Bob Graham and the CLAP HANDS series of board books by Helen Oxenbury, but the Michael Rosen was published in 2007 and the Helen Oxenbury in 1987.  Other books I was shown included SO MUCH by Trish Cooke (1994) and books by Ezra Jack Keats, who died in 1983.  They’re all terrific books, but we should be able to go to this year’s crop of picture books and find images in them that ALL our children and grandchildren can recognize and identify with.  There are some, sure, but nowhere near enough.

The world that is represented in a lot of picture booksdoesn’t seem to have changed much since the world of Judith Kerr’s THE TIGER WHO CAME TO TEA, whose café and Dad and street scenes come straight out of the 1950s England I grew up in.  It looks absolutely nothing like Wood Green, where I live, or like Peckham, where my daughter lives, or Birmingham, Leeds, Newcastle or Liverpool.  It doesn’t even look like provincial market towns and villages in the countryside.  Not any more.

I’m not sure where it is, this picture book world, but I can tell you that in most primary schools and nurseries in this country there are children who won’t find anyonewho looks like them in most of the books that they are given.

#WeNeedDiverseBooksUK by Savita Kalhan

Recently I wrote a blog here about diversity in children’s literature Black and White and Everything in Between. I'm returning to the discussion again today.

Malorie Blackman has talked and written and discussed the lack of diversity in children’s literature. Recently she was interviewed about the issue and egregiously misquoted, which led to a lot of racist comments on her Twitter feed. On the Edge Writers blog, Paula Rawsthorne discussed this and the issue of diversity. You can read it here..

Bali Rai has talked about the lack of diversity in children’s literature, as have many other writers, librarians, readers and reviewers.

In the States a huge campaign was launched after it was revealed that all the ‘luminaries from the world of children’s, teen and YA writers invited to the panel discussions at the BookExpo America were all white and all male’. After the campaign, a much more diverse group of children’s authors were invited to sit on a panel to discuss the issue.

The American Association for Library Service to children also initiated a programme to address the lack of diversity in children’s literature available in libraries.
I blogged about the whole US #WeNeedDiverseBooks campaign on the Edge Writers blog, which you can read here.

When I talked about the issue on Twitter I was told by an editor at a very big publishing house that it wholeheartedly promoted diverse writers, and already had two on their lists, (the inference drawn was that obviously that was quite sufficient). But, she said, the problem really was that British writers from ethnically diverse backgrounds were not submitting manuscripts to publishers, and she could not understand why...

I know the truth to be a little different.

I also know she did not grasp this concept at all: that if children from ethnically diverse backgrounds rarely see any version of themselves, other than occasionally as stereotypes or as bit parts, then they are in danger of believing that books are the preserve of the white middle classes, and also that the children’s publishing industry might not be a place for them when they grow up. Perhaps I’m painting it too black and white, but I’m sure you know what I’m saying.

Children’s fiction, teen fiction and YA fiction is a tougher market than it ever was before, it’s also become far narrower than ever before, both in terms of the books commissioned and published, and the apparent ‘market trends’ as dictated by the publicity and marketing departments. This is reinforced by the lack of diversity in terms of ethnicity, age, background, and sex of most of the editors at most of the publishing houses in the UK. You only have to go to a book publishing event or conference to see that for yourselves. There are few people of colour.

Everything has been squeezed. The market-driven publishing houses are all on the look-out for the Next Big Thing, mid-range writers are often fighting a losing battle, teen/YA shelves are now full of very, very similar books on very, very similar themes, and you’ll be very lucky if you find much diversity in theme never mind anything else.

Something has to change surely. So I wholeheartedly support Malorie Blackman in her endeavour to promote diversity in children’s literature. I know lots of children’s writers who feel the same way and are blogging to raise awareness.

Here’s a hashtag we can all use to help promote diversity in children’s literature, and I use the term diversity in its widest possible sense - #WeNeedDiverseBooksUK
And I very much hope that the publishing industry pays more than lip service too.

Savita's website