Report shows fourfold rise in minority ethnic characters in UK children’s books

The Centre for Literacy in Primary Education welcomes steep increase in representation, but warns there are ‘no quick fixes’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. Continue reading... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'

[ The Guardian | 2021-11-04 14:36:37 UTC ]
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