(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?
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| 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 anyone
who looks like them in most of the books that they are given.
6 comments:
Thank you for your thoughtful post, Paul May. There's nothing like personal experience and feelings to make such "absences" visible.
Thanks for your post, Paul, and it is a shame that you couldn't find much for your grandson in the bookshops. I know that Tamarind Press has lots more choice, and authors like Odette Eliot write picture books that you might like for your grandson.
And I agree that it is often only when you step into soemone else's shoes, (or booties in this case!) that you become aware of what's missing. Thanks for your post.
Can I recommend Letterbox Library? They have a fabulous range of books, including imports. But yes it's noticeable that picture books are still sadly so overwhelmingly vanilla. I'd recommend for when he's a little older Leon and Bob by Simon James, one of my favourite ever picture books.
Through this post, I felt the need to buy good books, especially for children. It's very meaningful to buy your grandson his first book and sad that you could no longer find some really great books.
It's surprising that things haven't moved on. When I was writing educational resources a good fifteen years ago, the illustrations - and the text had to feature a range of children. It's strange that, on the whole, picture books are still overwhelmingly white.
It is really good to see your post. Sometimes I feel as if I am "banging on" about something that other people think does not matter. Fortunately Malorie Blackman and Savita Kalhan have highlighted this problem and they are famous enough to be listened to.
Some people are so anxious to tell me that "children do not notice colour". But often they DO and there should be books depicting children of all possible colours and backgrounds. We have had difficulty in finding enough books for our beautiful black granddaughter.
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