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You can find the current article at its original source at https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jul/23/childrens-books-bame-characters-stuck-monochrome
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| Version 2 | Version 3 |
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| Why are children’s books stuck in monochrome? | Why are children’s books stuck in monochrome? |
| (25 days later) | |
| It was a long time before I met a character who looked like me. I cropped up in the occasional children’s classic, Indian and odd, wearing my ethnicity on my sleeve. There I was in Hergé’s Tintin, a kindly maharaja. There I was in Enid Blyton, an urchin babbling in broken English. I was a backstory in The Secret Garden and A Little Princess – a snatch of something familiar that made my heart leap. My parents gave me Ruskin Bond and RK Narayan and Amar Chitra Katha’s comics, but the stories were too Indian for a girl growing up in Wembley – my teachers hadn’t heard of them, and my friends were reading Roald Dahl. I left them on the shelf. Once a year, we listened to the story of Diwali in class. | It was a long time before I met a character who looked like me. I cropped up in the occasional children’s classic, Indian and odd, wearing my ethnicity on my sleeve. There I was in Hergé’s Tintin, a kindly maharaja. There I was in Enid Blyton, an urchin babbling in broken English. I was a backstory in The Secret Garden and A Little Princess – a snatch of something familiar that made my heart leap. My parents gave me Ruskin Bond and RK Narayan and Amar Chitra Katha’s comics, but the stories were too Indian for a girl growing up in Wembley – my teachers hadn’t heard of them, and my friends were reading Roald Dahl. I left them on the shelf. Once a year, we listened to the story of Diwali in class. |
| Let the children of colour fall into wonderland. Let the characters have complex names – and let them have a laugh. | Let the children of colour fall into wonderland. Let the characters have complex names – and let them have a laugh. |
| When you’re young, you assimilate. I buried any sense of personal identity I brought to literature, and instead followed the traditional route of CS Lewis, Louisa May Alcott, Lucy Maud Montgomery and Rosemary Sutcliff. I climbed enchanted trees, flew to Neverland, cried over the plight of Victorian horses. And as I filled up with stories, I understood a strange and unspoken truth. Brown children did not go on adventures. | When you’re young, you assimilate. I buried any sense of personal identity I brought to literature, and instead followed the traditional route of CS Lewis, Louisa May Alcott, Lucy Maud Montgomery and Rosemary Sutcliff. I climbed enchanted trees, flew to Neverland, cried over the plight of Victorian horses. And as I filled up with stories, I understood a strange and unspoken truth. Brown children did not go on adventures. |
| But that was the 1990s, and things are different now, right? Surely, children no longer have to wait till they’re 12 to read about themselves. Alas, a report by the Centre for Literacy in Primary Education (CLPE) suggests otherwise: just 4% of children’s books published in 2017 featured black and minority ethnic characters – at a time when 32% of schoolchildren are of BAME origin; 0.5% of the books featured a central character who was Asian; and only one of the 9,115 children’s books published in the UK was a comedy with a BAME character. This is not a surprise. I now own a children’s bookshop, and know how slim the pickings are when you’re looking for a character of colour beyond the parameters of young adult fiction. | But that was the 1990s, and things are different now, right? Surely, children no longer have to wait till they’re 12 to read about themselves. Alas, a report by the Centre for Literacy in Primary Education (CLPE) suggests otherwise: just 4% of children’s books published in 2017 featured black and minority ethnic characters – at a time when 32% of schoolchildren are of BAME origin; 0.5% of the books featured a central character who was Asian; and only one of the 9,115 children’s books published in the UK was a comedy with a BAME character. This is not a surprise. I now own a children’s bookshop, and know how slim the pickings are when you’re looking for a character of colour beyond the parameters of young adult fiction. |
| Only 1% of children's books have BAME main characters – UK study | |
| Life in my store is mostly full of joys. There are the spontaneous story times; intense debates with children about characters and plotlines. There are the days you recommend a book to a child who would rather be anywhere else, and then weeks later they’ll come bouncing back, bursting to tell you that they loved it beyond all expectation. There are the events with authors and illustrators who set children off on their own reading journeys. | Life in my store is mostly full of joys. There are the spontaneous story times; intense debates with children about characters and plotlines. There are the days you recommend a book to a child who would rather be anywhere else, and then weeks later they’ll come bouncing back, bursting to tell you that they loved it beyond all expectation. There are the events with authors and illustrators who set children off on their own reading journeys. |
| But then there are the days when an expecting parent will come in and ask for a picture book featuring a British Asian family, and I’ll find myself faltering as I reach for the shelves because the only book I had has been sold. A teacher asks for 10 different novels featuring BAME characters for each year group, and we manage – but only just. In a bookshop full of imagination, knowing its limitations can be frustrating. | But then there are the days when an expecting parent will come in and ask for a picture book featuring a British Asian family, and I’ll find myself faltering as I reach for the shelves because the only book I had has been sold. A teacher asks for 10 different novels featuring BAME characters for each year group, and we manage – but only just. In a bookshop full of imagination, knowing its limitations can be frustrating. |
| The lone comedy published in 2017 also gives pause for thought. Why are characters of colour limited to the everyday; to tales of war and migration and woe? Yes, we are made of travels, and not always happy ones. But don’t we also deserve the occasional journey through a wardrobe, or comic misadventure? | The lone comedy published in 2017 also gives pause for thought. Why are characters of colour limited to the everyday; to tales of war and migration and woe? Yes, we are made of travels, and not always happy ones. But don’t we also deserve the occasional journey through a wardrobe, or comic misadventure? |
| There are positives: wonderful, creative authors and publishing houses and illustrators – people I reach for first and foremost. Books illustrated by Jane Ray; novels written by Malorie Blackman, Sita Brahmachari, Susie Day, Candy Gourlay, Elizabeth Laird; books published by Frances Lincoln, Otter-Barry, Barrington Stoke, Barefoot. Lantana and Tiny Owl are newer houses with diversity at their core and beautifully produced lists. Picture books have started to catch up, and now feature little brown scientists and bear hunters. | There are positives: wonderful, creative authors and publishing houses and illustrators – people I reach for first and foremost. Books illustrated by Jane Ray; novels written by Malorie Blackman, Sita Brahmachari, Susie Day, Candy Gourlay, Elizabeth Laird; books published by Frances Lincoln, Otter-Barry, Barrington Stoke, Barefoot. Lantana and Tiny Owl are newer houses with diversity at their core and beautifully produced lists. Picture books have started to catch up, and now feature little brown scientists and bear hunters. |
| But finding a character of colour in novels aimed at younger readers can still feel like stumbling upon treasure. Tamaya, the brave and earnest heroine in Louis Sachar’s Fuzzy Mud, could be Asian. Bilal’s Brilliant Bee by Michael Rosen is a playful and subversive young chapter book – with an unambiguously Indian lead. The detective in Robin Stevens’s wildly popular Murder Most Unladylike series is a girl from Hong Kong who simultaneously handles criminals and 1930s boarding-school culture – there are times when both feel equally perilous. David Roberts’s children’s book on suffragettes features a full-page spread on Sophia Duleep Singh, and acknowledges our place in history. The forthcoming Tales of Beedle the Bard by JK Rowling is undergoing lavish refurbishment, with illustrations by Chris Riddell – and this time, one of the heroines is explicitly Asian. Having watched Parvati Patil fade from Hogwarts until the narrative had no need of her, to be granted another place in this wide and expanding canon is an unexpected treat. | But finding a character of colour in novels aimed at younger readers can still feel like stumbling upon treasure. Tamaya, the brave and earnest heroine in Louis Sachar’s Fuzzy Mud, could be Asian. Bilal’s Brilliant Bee by Michael Rosen is a playful and subversive young chapter book – with an unambiguously Indian lead. The detective in Robin Stevens’s wildly popular Murder Most Unladylike series is a girl from Hong Kong who simultaneously handles criminals and 1930s boarding-school culture – there are times when both feel equally perilous. David Roberts’s children’s book on suffragettes features a full-page spread on Sophia Duleep Singh, and acknowledges our place in history. The forthcoming Tales of Beedle the Bard by JK Rowling is undergoing lavish refurbishment, with illustrations by Chris Riddell – and this time, one of the heroines is explicitly Asian. Having watched Parvati Patil fade from Hogwarts until the narrative had no need of her, to be granted another place in this wide and expanding canon is an unexpected treat. |
| 'BAME writers must tell their own stories – and we have to be disruptive' | |
| Why is it that adult literary prizes are so frequently won by BAME writers, but children’s prizes come under fire for their perennially white shortlists? Why do BAME writers and illustrators veer away from children’s publishing when it has never flourished more? These are conversations we keep having, and every corner of the children’s literature world is constantly coming up with the ideas. It’s getting better. But the numbers have the final word. | Why is it that adult literary prizes are so frequently won by BAME writers, but children’s prizes come under fire for their perennially white shortlists? Why do BAME writers and illustrators veer away from children’s publishing when it has never flourished more? These are conversations we keep having, and every corner of the children’s literature world is constantly coming up with the ideas. It’s getting better. But the numbers have the final word. |
| I was 13 before I found Jamila Gavin on my school shelf, and I still remember the strange, unfolding, secret pleasure as I read the blurb and recognised myself. This promised to be a romp, a historical whirlwind that involved stories of Mughal kings I remembered from my old Amar Chitra Katha comics. Gavin’s novels brought me back to the developing, diversifying land of young adult fiction. I was 13 before the literary land to which I’d devoted myself had a book to give back. | I was 13 before I found Jamila Gavin on my school shelf, and I still remember the strange, unfolding, secret pleasure as I read the blurb and recognised myself. This promised to be a romp, a historical whirlwind that involved stories of Mughal kings I remembered from my old Amar Chitra Katha comics. Gavin’s novels brought me back to the developing, diversifying land of young adult fiction. I was 13 before the literary land to which I’d devoted myself had a book to give back. |
| This should no longer be the story for our young readers. So let the children of colour fall into wonderland. Let the characters have complex names – and let them have a laugh. In doing so, you can only create more readers. | This should no longer be the story for our young readers. So let the children of colour fall into wonderland. Let the characters have complex names – and let them have a laugh. In doing so, you can only create more readers. |
| • Sanchita Basu De Sarkar is the owner of the Children’s Bookshop in Muswell Hill, London | • Sanchita Basu De Sarkar is the owner of the Children’s Bookshop in Muswell Hill, London |
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