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

Loughborough University Literary Salon 2014 by Savita Kalhan

I was invited to take part in Loughborough University’s 2^nd Literary Salon by Kerry Featherstone, lecturer in English. Industry professionals were invited: Walker Books and the literary agents from DKW, and another author – Maxine Linnell. The subject of the Salon was: Writing YA Fiction. We were each invited to speak, followed by a Q and A session, and, at the end of the evening, there was a Round Table. The audience comprised students, lecturers, authors and anyone in the local area interested in Teen/YA fiction. There was a great turn out and an interested and involved audience, with lots of discussions.

My talk focussed on the realities, good and bad, of being a children’s writer in the modern world, what an average advance might be, royalties, the changes in the publishing industry, and my experiences of being a teen/YA writer. I tried to give a balanced view on how difficult it is to make a living from writing, how a children’s writer today has to wear very many hats, know the industry and know how it works, while not neglecting the most important aspect of being an author: writing a book. I was a little surprised by how many students of creative writing were unaware of the realities of being a children’s writer.

I hope I didn’t put them off wanting to be writers!
 
The round table discussions focussed on various issues, including age banding in children’s books, the changing reading habits of children and teenagers, and diversity in children’s books. Bali Rai joined the round table and talked about how he and Malorie Blackman have been discussing the lack of diversity in children’s literature for many years, and how little has changed in that time. I’ve blogged about diversity in Teen/YA lit here on An Awfully Big Blog Adventure here and on The Edge Blog here, and for Teen Librarian Monthly here. Reading David Thorpe’s interesting post on yesterday’s blog, made me wonder about the diversity in the ethnicity of the children who had entered the 500 word story writing competition where 118,632 entries were received.

The Literary Salon was a very good event for students who were interested in pursuing a career in writing. They got to meet a publisher, agents and writers, and to put questions to them. It was the kind of event I would have loved to have gone to when I first started writing and knew so little about the publishing world.


Book Trailer for The Long Weekend

Savita Kalhan's website here

Savita on Twitter here