Growing up, I absolutely loved reading and I loved books.
And my absolute favourite book ever was Amazing Grace,
which was about this little black girl who loved stories and wanted to do everything.
And she was exactly like me.
But now looking back, I've kind of realised that actually that was literally
the only book available to me that made me feel like I was represented.
This was back in the 90s, but I read a statistic the other day that made me worried
that nothing's changed.
So I'm going to find out just how inclusive kids' books really are today.
And if not, why not? And who's responsible.
To help me figure it out, I'm meeting industry game changers
and even the author of Amazing Grace.
But first, I'm going back to my primary school, the place where I learned to love to read.
I'm meeting some of the kids there to see what they think.
Who loves reading? Good answer.
When I was growing up, I had this book called Amazing Grace.
I don't know if any of you have read it? – I think I have.
This book was pretty important for me because the character was really similar to me,
she liked stories, her hair was similar to me as well.
Raise your hand if you feel like you've seen a character in a book
that looks like you or reminds you of you?
– Er yeah, quite a lot actually.
– Hermione in Harry Potter, she looks a bit like me.
– Well not really, but very rarely I do. – Sometimes.
– What about you?
– Some of my family is from India and some of my family is from America.
I don't really see anybody.
– There is loads of books that have just white people in them.
There should be more of different coloured people and different religions.
My dad's side are Jewish and I don't think I've ever seen a Jewish book character.
They're usually all Christians.
– I have a book at home that I really, really like because
it's a book that I got for my birthday and it's just got black people in it
and it's about all the amazing things that they can do.
– And how do you feel when you read that book?
– Anything is possible.
– Well if I read that kind of book as well, with loads of different coloured people,
stuff like that, I just feel everything is possible as well.
– So you guys think that it's important that you have characters that you can
see yourselves in when you're reading books? – Yeah.
– It just makes you feel, it just makes you feel good.
Clearly, there's a massive appetite for these books, but I'm just not seeing
enough of them on the shelves.
There is this one book I've heard of that's both inclusive and popular.
So I'm going to meet the author and the illustrator on a book bus in south London
to find out.
Hi, guys.
– Hi. Tin Tin, ooh. – Watership Down.
– Wow, we want to show you our book. – Look Up? OK.
– Yeah, exactly. So can you see it right at the back?
Our book is about a little girl called Rocket and she loves space.
And she wants her older brother to look up from his mobile phone
so he can see a big meteor shower coming across the sky.
– Jamal is really boring. – Yeah, Jamal is boring.
Who wants to look down at their phone all the time?
– Yep, boring. – Phones are so boring.
What has the reaction been to the book?
– The reaction and the response has been nothing short of uplifting.
Everyone always says this: I know a Rocket, as in they know a little girl.
They were that little girl. – It's been glorious.
– So a recent study showed that only 4%
of book characters are BAME.
– It's really interesting. If you go on Twitter and you see, you know, people are talking
like, 4% is high.
They're like you guys did 4%. High five. Well done. You can stop it there.
But people are actually angry at that number. – 96% is still left.
So like, you know, it's not something to brag about.
– And there's more inanimate objects as main characters in books
than BAME main characters so that's also quite, you know,
– heart wrenching. – problematic.
Yeah. It's problematic that a rock has more of a chance of being a lead character ...
– Or a sponge. – Than a black child.
The amount of homework that you have to do to get representation right,
It's not a lot, you know.
That's why I kind of fail to understand why it's so difficult to get more than 4%,
do you know what I mean?
– Also, us knowing that we can write picture books.
If I'm totally honest, I never thought ever in my life
I was ever going to write a picture book.
I never thought.
– So I'm interested in the commissioning process.
What was that like? Did you have a lot of offers?
Was it easy? Was it difficult?
– We had offers that numbered in the double digits to publish the book first time out.
We didn't get rejected once by anybody. And it was ridiculous.
You know, we've got a talented black writer, a talent black illustrator, a great character.
I'll be really stark and really honest about it:
we ticked all the boxes.
Publishing is a business, so it made business sense.
Book Trust did another survey as well and it showed that 1.9%
of creatives creating the content were black and minority ethnic as well.
And that's writers and illustrators.
And in that 1.9%, I am one of two black British illustrators
working in UK publishing. – Wow.
There might be more now because this was about a year ago, but I am one of two.
– OK, so say you're one of five. – 4%. It's a crazy stat, so that needs to change.
All of that needs to change.
For this diversity push to be genuine, we need to have more people that represent
the diversity that the publishing industry says it wants, creating the content
and commissioning content.
– And that's at grassroots and at head level. It's both, you need both.
Like you need to talk to kids in this school, everywhere, and say,
'yeah, this could to be your story'. Definitely.
The reaction to Look Up! proves that the demand for books like it.
So what's the problem?
I'm in Brixton to speak with the founders Knights Of.
They're an inclusive kids book publisher and I'm meeting them at their bookshop.
They only stock diverse books,
so that includes race, gender, sexuality and everything else.
They're the rare few that are doing what they're doing, so I want to find out
why it isn't the norm.
So what has the reaction been from people who live in the community
and people who come to the bookshop?
– I mean, the shop has been absolutely amazing
and we've only been open six months.
And we get a lot of kids, a lot of parents, as you expect, and also of teachers
and librarians passing through who are just overjoyed to see themselves on the shelves.
– So what's the importance on the wider level in publishing?
– I think when you open the doors, as it were,
as to what publishing looks like,
you see a very homogenous space and unfortunately that is reflected
in the books that come through.
I feel as though the more we talk about the different opportunities within publishing,
the more we'll reach different people and the make-up of offices will change.
– It's also how important and how powerful it is to see authors and illustrators
going to schools and showing any kid in the room that your ideas and
your imagination is valid and the stories you want to tell are incredibly valid.
– What are your hopes for the future?
– This happened in the 70s and the early 80s and again in the 90s.
Each time you think, great, we've made it and then it just ...
– fizzles out. – Either it now fizzles out ...
– Or people ... – people get burnt out.
There has been many people that have come before us who have been
shouting about inclusivity and the need for diversity within kids' books.
And I think what we're hoping now is that it's not just the singular few
who are shouting and hoping that change will happen.
What we're trying to do is sell as many books as possible point to it.
So it's not just one tiny bookshop in Brixton selling inclusive titles,
but it's Waterstones, WH Smith and all of the indies around the country.
So it's it's not unusual to see a book with a brown or black kid on the cover,
or a kid in a wheelchair on the cover.
Instead, it starts to become ... It's just another book.
– Yeah. – I mean, talking ourselves out of a job.
– We would love to become defunct, I think.
– I mean, I'd love for our message to be: we make great stories and adventures,
– Yeah.
– Instead of we make great stories and adventures that include every kind of kid.
I'd like that second half of the sentence to be irrelevant.
The popularity of Knights Of with all audiences just emphasises even more
how confusing this all is.
For decades there's been a demand for diverse books.
So why is progress in this area so slow?
I'm going back to the beginning of my journey to meet Mary Hoffman,
who has been pioneering diversity for as long as I can remember
Maybe she can help me figure out what's going on.
– Hello. – Hi Grace.
– Nice to meet you. – Nice to meet you, too.
– Come on in. – Thank you.
– This is my study where I do all the writing.
– Amazing.
– ... sitting here on my green sofa.
So should I read something from it? – If you would.
– OK. Grace was a girl who loved stories.
She didn't mind if they were read to her or told to her or made up in her own head.
She didn't care if they were from books or on TV or in films or on the video
or out of Nana's long memory, Grace just loved stories.
– I feel like this is a very full circle moment
because I've read this book and I've had this book since childhood.
– You've loved the cover right off. – I've loved it right off.
This book had a really big impact on me, and I know it had a big impact
on a lot of other people.
What made you want to write this book?
– So I wrote it in 1989. And at that time, there were very few books
that had black main characters in the UK.
There was a couple of books by Petronella Breinberg, and those were,
really, the only ones I knew about, you know. I just didn't think there were enough, really.
And my principle has always been if the book doesn't exist that you want,
well, you better write it, so I wrote Amazing Grace.
When people read the book, I think a lot of people would assume
that you are a black writer and some people may be surprised
when they find out that you're not.
– I've had a lot of letters from black women, the mothers of daughters,
who feel empowered by this book, who have assumed that I'm black,
and I take that as a great compliment because it means I've got something right.
I really write towards my own redundancy because I hope that in years to come,
after my death, people will look at my books and say,
what a funny old world she must have been living in that you need to make the point
that a black girl can be anything she wants or that a grandmother can be fun,
or, you know, any of the any of the issues that I've tackled in my books.
I hope they would just think that these are museum pieces.
We don't live in that kind of world anymore.
– So there's been a big push for representation in publishing and there have been
mixed reviews of its success. What are your thoughts?
– That it's going very slowly because I've been banging on about it
for 30 years or more.
I think the main problem is that it's the little publishers, the independent publishers
and the independent bookshops that are leading the way on this.
And I think the big publishing houses, I don't think they mean to not cover
so many aspects of diversity, I think they're just not perhaps woke enough.
You know, we've been trying to wake them up, but they're just not quite woke enough.
Progress is slow and the publishing industry needs to do better to commit to change
to make a serious push for diversity if it's going to stick this time.
Only if that happens, will future generations of children
get to see, not only themselves, but their friends, their families,
their communities reflected in the books that they read.