Children’s books failing to reflect diversity of modern Britain – survey

The lack of representation has prompted Aimee Felone to set up her own publishing company called Knights Of with its first title out in two weeks.

She said: “It’s called Knights And Bikes… one white girl, one brown girl riding bikes, fighting monsters. It’s full of adventure, friendship, bravery. It’s exactly what I wanted when I was a kid to read but didn’t have.

“I think oftentimes, books that feature diverse characters can fall into social justice issues, or let’s talk about history or let’s talk about race as a massive topic not just normalising diverse characters in books and that can create a lack of empathy between kids.”

The lack of non-white faces in books is something that 10-year-old Eshaan Pryse, whose mother is of Indian descent and father is white British, has noticed.

He said: “I think it would be good if there were more characters who had different skin colours in books… There should be more of a mix really.”

Eshaan’s father Steve Pryse, who opened Pickled Pepper Books in north London with his wife in 2012, says things are getting better but not fast enough.

“It’s a shame… I ask my kids ‘do you recognise yourself in the books you read?’ and they say ‘not really’.”

The survey called Reflecting Realities, carried out by the Centre for Literacy in Primary Education (CLPE), revealed that only 4% of the children’s books out last year included any characters belonging to an ethnic minority.

Louise Johns-Shepherd, the chief executive of CLPE, wants the report to trigger change.

She said: “We hope that publishers will publish more books with black and minority ethnic characters in them and we hope that authors will be given the platform to write more of those books, particularly authors who can do that in an authentic way.

“We really hope that teachers are going to be able to use the statistics to think about what’s available in their classrooms and whether that reflects the society in which we live and we hope that parents will look at that in bookshops when they are buying books for their children.”

It is the first time such research has been carried out in the UK but it will now be repeated annually to monitor any improvement.