The Problem: Representation and the Children’s Publishing Industry
About the Children’s Picture Book Industry
According to a 2021 Guardian article The proportion of children’s books featuring a minority ethnic character has almost quadrupled in the last four years, according to a new survey – but researchers say “we are not yet at the point where children of colour have the same experience of literature as their white peers”.
The annual Reflecting Realities Survey from the Centre for Literacy in Primary Education (CLPE), which monitors the diversity of the UK’s children’s books, launched in 2018, when it found that just 4% of the children’s books published the previous year featured a black or minority ethnic character – and just 1% had a minority ethnic main character. Described as “stark and shocking” at the time, the proportions have increased in each year since, to 7% in 2018 and 10% in 2019, and - with 5,875 children’s picture books, fiction and non-fiction titles published in the UK in 2020 – to 15% in 2020, with 8% of titles featuring a minority ethnic main character.
According to the latest official data, 33.9% of children of primary school age in England are from an ethnic minority background.
“We know how long it takes to turn things around in the book industry. From idea to publication is quite a long process, so we weren’t really anticipating in the early phases of doing this work that we would get an upward trend every single year,” said the report’s author, Farrah Serroukh. “It’s a pleasant surprise.”
The increase has been particularly significant for picture books and children’s non-fiction, with 48% of picture books now featuring a character of colour, compared with 6% in the 2017 output, and 34% of non-fiction titles.
Fiction, however, remained static in 2020, with 7% of titles featuring characters of colour, the same as the previous year. “Of the three categories, it’s probably the hardest to do well,” said Serroukh. “It’s really hard to write a character of colour quickly. You can’t go from the intention of a character being white to shifting that character to being of a different background without doing the labour that’s necessary. There are no quick fixes. So you have to, from the outset, have had the intention to write the character of colour. And if that wasn’t the intention, you can’t really turn it around and change it to be something that it wasn’t originally.”
t notes that often the higher presence of characters of colour in illustrations didn’t “always carry through into the detail of the text itself”, and “there were also instances of ambiguity and fluidity in portrayals of ethnicity in illustrations”.
But it criticised the “many” novels which fell short in this area, either because the ethnic minority presence “was too insignificant to reasonably be recognised as a meaningful reflection of realities”, or because the portrayal was “insufficiently or poorly developed”.
The study compares the fact that 33.9% of children of primary school age in England are from a minority ethnic background, with the 8% of children’s books that have a minority ethnic main character. “There is still some way to go before UK children’s books more accurately reflect the reality of the school population, but the speed of change serves to reinforce the benefit and tangible impact of the survey and a wide range of other initiatives across the publishing, charity and literature sectors,” it said.
“Every year we say this work is not just about the numbers, and we say it again this year. We can see that across the industry there are real and concerted efforts to change the quality of pictures, descriptions and stories of people from racialised minorities,” said CLPE chief executive Louise Johns-Shepherd. “We welcome these changes but we are not yet at the point where children of colour have the same experience of literature as their white peers.”
Black Authors and the Publishing Industry
2020 Last year, the reading charity Booktrust reported that 93% of children’s books were written by white people, while 2019 research by the Centre for Literacy in Primary Education found that only 5% of children’s books featured a main character from an ethnic minority. Nine out of 10 books did not contain any BAME characters at all. Nine out of 10 books did not contain any BAME characters at all, yet 33% of primary school aged children in England are from a minority ethnic background.
In 2019, the Guardian analysed the diversity of the most popular picture books and found that – notwithstanding the huge popularity of Julia Donaldson – the vast majority were written and illustrated by white men.
Dapo Adeola, an award-winning, British-Nigerian children’s illustrator and author, is not convinced children’s publishers are doing enough to improve diversity in the industry.
“It’s all well and good they’re starting these schemes. But I do think there’s an easier, more direct approach that can be taken, if the publishers are willing to step outside of the door they’re opening for people to come through, and go to these communities.”
Publishers are moving forward only in small steps, he says.
“Everything they seem to be doing reinforces that whole narrative of ‘one or two black people can come through this door at a time’. I don’t see enough grassroots work.”
New research has found that 11.7% of children’s book creators published in the UK in 2021 were people of colour, up from 5.6% in 2017.
Despite the big improvement, though, “the UK’s body of children’s literature overall remains far from representative” said Diana Gerald, chief executive of BookTrust, in the report’s introduction.
The Representation of people of colour among children’s book creators in the UK report was written by the University of Glasgow’s Dr Melanie Ramdarshan Bold and commissioned by BookTrust. It found that while 11.7% overall were people of colour, just 4.5% of children’s book creators were British people of colour. However, there were 74 British debut creators of colour in 2021, up from just 12 in 2017.
As well as statistical research, the report also interviewed 20 writers and illustrators about their experiences of the publishing industry, including Dapo Adeola, Maisie Chan, Serena Patel, Dean Atta, Rashmi Sirdeshpande and Onyinye Iwu. Some said they had stronger relationships with publishers and saw publishers making long-term investments in the careers of creators of colour.
However, creators also felt “unable or reluctant to speak about instances of racism and discrimination openly in the publishing industry”, and brought up concerns that “some publishers are engaging superficially with issues of exclusion and under-representation”. Some authors felt that some publishers were rushing the publication of books by creators of colour simply in order to capitalise on the popularity of and demand for “diverse” books.
“We’re getting a lot of what I call cookie cutter books”, Adeola said. “Filler books that are rushed out, just to fill up shelf space and tick boxes” so that publishers can say “we have this book [...] about diversity.”
Dr Ramdarshan Bold said it was “great that there’s a tentative growth in the number of children’s creators of colour published in the UK”.
But, she added, “beyond the numbers, it’s clear that there’s still a lot of work to make children’s publishing more equitable”.
“The creators of colour interviewed for this report gave very honest accounts – both positive and negative – of their experiences in children’s publishing, outlining some key barriers and enablers they faced,” she continued.
“This ranged from everyday micro-aggressions to active allies in publishing to the joyful impact of school visits. I hope that book industry professionals, and those adjacent to children’s books, really reflect on these experiences, and the report in general, to ensure that diversity, equality, and inclusion are sustainable and embedded parts of the children’s book world.”
Also released on Wednesday was a second report by BookTrust, about the experiences of primary school teachers and pupils who welcomed creators of colour into the classroom.
The BookTrust Represents Schools Support: Evaluation Report, 2022 found that “representation in children’s books and their creators has a critical impact on children’s wider learning experiences and development in the classroom and beyond”. It also found that visits from creators of colour inspired many students “to write their own stories, with the authors they met serving as positive role models”.
Gerald said that there “are now more opportunities for creators of colour to publish children’s books in the UK today, meaning more children can read their brilliant stories”.
“Yet creators of colour still experience barriers,” she continued.
“Overall, when you take into consideration the volume of books previously published and that still inspire children and live on bookshelves today, the UK’s body of children’s literature remains far from representative.
Improving representation in the books children read remains at the forefront of our work and we are committed to working in partnership with children, families, creators, publishers, schools, libraries and more until we get there.”