The number of children\u2019s books featuring a Black main character dropped by more than a fifth between 2023 and 2024, according to a new report by a literacy charity.<\/p>\n
The report by Inclusive Books for Children (IBC) surveyed books published last year for readers aged one to nine. Of the 2,721 books surveyed, only 51 (1.9%) featured a Black main character, down by 21.5% compared with 2023.<\/p>\n
The charity described the findings as a \u201ccatastrophic decline in Black representation\u201d, and said the report revealed \u201cstark inequalities\u201d in UK children\u2019s publishing.<\/p>\n
It also reported that about 6% of children\u2019s books featured marginalised main characters, and just under half (49%) of those were created by authors or illustrators from those groups.<\/p>\n
Representation was low across a range of identity groups. Just 35 books (1.3%) featured south Asian main characters, while about 12.5% of children in English nursery and primary schools have south Asian heritage.<\/p>\n
Only seven books featured disabled main characters, with most created by non-disabled authors or illustrators, and six featured neurodivergent main characters.<\/p>\n
Earlier this year, a number of leading Black literary figures told the Guardian <\/a>that UK publishing is less accessible to Black authors now than it was five years ago. While the Black Lives Matter movement of 2020 led to many publishing houses making commitments to address racial inequality in the industry, a number of industry figures said there has since been a noticeable downturn in the number of Black writers being published.<\/p>\n Analysis by the Bookseller in 2023<\/a> also found that the boom in Black authors being published after 2020 \u201cfailed to result in the promised broadening of publishing\u2019s output\u201d.<\/p>\n Jasmine Richards, founder of inclusive fiction studio Storymix, said: \u201cThe steep drop in books for five-to-nine-year-olds featuring Black main characters is not just disappointing \u2013 it\u2019s further evidence of the quiet rollback that has taken place over the last two years. And if you\u2019ve been paying attention, it\u2019s not a surprise.\u201d<\/p>\n The survey also arrives against a backdrop of a wider reading crisis: the National Literacy Trust reports that reading for pleasure is at an all-time low, with only one in three children<\/a> aged eight to 18 saying they enjoy reading in 2025, a 36% drop since 2005.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Nesrine Malik and Jason Okundaye deliver your weekly dose of Black life and culture from around the world<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com<\/a> to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n The IBC report \u201chighlights the huge missed opportunity to show children, through high-quality, authentic storytelling, that everybody belongs and everybody adds value to society,\u201d said Marcus Satha, who co-founded the charity with his partner Sarah after struggling to find representative books to read with their two mixed-heritage children.<\/p>\n Sarah added that the report\u2019s findings are important because \u201cwe face a reading for pleasure crisis, and the narrow range of books hogging shelves is clearly not doing a good job of enticing a wider range of potential book lovers.\u201d<\/p>\n It is also \u201cnot enough to plug the gap\u201d with \u201cnon-Own Voice stories\u201d \u2013 books featuring main characters with marginalised identities created by authors and illustrators with no lived experience of that identity. \u201cThis type of representation is superficial, and the reader can sense it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The number of children\u2019s books featuring a Black main character dropped by more than a fifth between 2023…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":298097,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[1022,171,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-298096","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115362984831319600","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298096","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=298096"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298096\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/298097"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=298096"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=298096"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=298096"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}