The Centre for Literacy in Primary Education (CLPE) has released the 7^th annual Reflecting Realities Survey of Ethnic Representation within UK Children’s Literature showing that 17% of children’s books published in 2023 feature a racially minoritised character. While this demonstrates a significant increase from the 4% first reported in 2017, it is the first year that the survey has shown an annual decrease, down from 30% in 2022. This decrease is also echoed in the percentage of racially minoritised main characters, down 7 percentage points from 14% in 2022 to 7% in 2023.  

Using the detailed methodology established in the first year of this work, the Reflecting Realities survey reports on racially minoritized characters included in fiction, non-fiction and picturebooks aimed at readers age 3-11.

For the first time this year, minoritised presence in fiction is down year on year - from 24% in 2022 to 11% in 2023. Fiction is also the text type which has seen much slower growth than non-fiction and picturebooks and these figures represent a significant widening of the gap. This is echoed in the presence reported in non-fiction - down from 30% in 2022 to 22% in 2023. This marks the second drop in a row after a sustained increase in the first five reports.

Picturebooks continue to have the highest proportion of presence across the three text types. Despite reporting a decrease of 9 percentage points in 2022 to 52% this cycle has seen a slight increase with 55% of picturebook titles published in 2023 featuring characters from racially minoritised backgrounds within their casts.

Farrah Serroukh Executive Director of Research and Development, CLPE said: ‘The ethical imperative should go without saying. However, beyond this the principle of inclusion simply makes books better. Through every annual review of the last seven years we have had the privilege of being treated to stories, characters, writing and worlds that have elevated the literary landscape, enriched the culture and transformed reading experiences. This can only be a good thing for the publishing industry and with the appropriate investment can have positive commercial and reputational implications. We encourage the industry to take the lessons learned and remain steadfast in their commitment to reflecting realities and serving their readership.’

Rebecca Eaves, Chief Executive, CLPE said: ‘A mere 12 months ago, we could be forgiven for looking at the results of the 6th Reflecting Realities report and congratulating ourselves on a collective job well done. These most recent, more sobering results, particularly after a summer of racially motivated riots, remind us that the job is far from done. It's more important than ever that all children can see themselves and those that look like them in the books they read. CLPE, with ongoing funding from the Arts Council England, will continue to support and champion our partners across the publishing industry in their commitment to make this a reality.’

The annual CLPE survey was launched in 2018 and has been funded by Arts Council England since its inception. The core aim of the survey is to determine the extent and quality of representation of racially minoritised characters featured within picturebooks, fiction and non-fiction for ages 3-11 published in the UK. Taken together, the 7 years of reporting provide an invaluable standard benchmark and guidance for the industry to evaluate output.

Katie and Kevin Tsang's brilliant Sam Wu series comes to a close with the sixth installment Sam Wu is Not Afraid of Space.  We were pleased to have the opportunity to catch up with Katie and Kevin to talk with them about the series and their exciting future plans.

Congratulations on the publication of Sam Wu is NOT Afraid of Space can you tease a little about what readers can expect?

Sam Wu is finally going to Space Camp--something he's been wanting to do since the very first book! It felt like the perfect setting for the final book in the series. And the whole crew is going too--Sam and his best friends Zoe and Bernard, plus his nemesis to friend Ralph Philip Zinkerman and his twin sister Regina. At camp, the friends will have to face a variety of fears as well as compete in Space Camp challenges! We had so much fun writing this one and did lots of research about what Space Camp is really like.

It is the final book in the series how does it feel to have reached this point?

We are so excited and grateful that we were able to do the series as we initially planned it. We always wanted there to be six books, and we always wanted the last one to be at Space Camp. It is definitely bittersweet to be wrapping the series up, but we've loved writing the books and hope kids will continue to read them and be inspired to face their own fears. 

Can you tell us a bit about how you collaborate when writing the books?

It took us a while to figure out what worked best for us! We always start with a lot of brainstorming and talking out the plot and the characters. When we first started thinking about the series, we would go on long walks to figure out what we wanted to do with the story. By book six it was much easier because we knew all the characters and both of us felt so comfortable writing in Sam's voice. Once we know the concept for a new book, we'll sit down and do a very detailed outline to make sure we are on the same page. Then we write everything together -- we sit in the living room and connect our laptop to a large monitor, and we take turns writing different chapters and scenes. The person who isn't typing can jump in at any time with suggestions or ideas, and we alternate who is typing and who is reviewing. If we start to argue about anything (which of course happens!) we take a five minute break and then come back to it. Now that we have a baby we have to take her schedule into consideration too, so we mostly work in the evenings after she's gone to sleep. 

What were your biggest fears as children and why?  Were you able to overcome these?

Kevin: I was, and still am, terrified of sharks. So writing SAM WU IS NOT AFRAID OF SHARKS felt very close to home! I think I have a healthy fear of them though, I definitely wouldn't want to get close to one. 

Katie: I used to have a recurring nightmare about being chased by dinosaurs in a giant parking structure. I think I have Jurassic Park to blame! Now my fears are all around meeting our writing deadlines...

The original Reflecting Realities report shone a light on just how narrow the UK's publishing has been in terms of representation.  Kevin, you grew up in Georgia, were you able to see yourself reflected in books and do you feel this had an impact on your interest and engagement with reading?

Kevin: My favorite thing to read as a kid were the Goosebumps books, and while I didn't see myself reflected in a lot of books, or anyone who looked like me, I still liked reading. I think I would have enjoyed reading about kids of Asian heritage though, and wish there had been more options available. I'm glad that now there are so many more options for kids to find themselves in books. 

Another finding within Reflecting Realities  was how the tendency for inclusive books to focus around issues and the dearth of humour.  How important is humour and do you feel there is a tendency among gatekeepers to overlook the funny in favour of the serious? How can we overcome this?

It was very important to us to make the SAM books funny books that appeal to all children, but just happen to be inclusive and have a hero of Asian heritage. The books aren't about Sam's cultural background, they are about him facing his fears with the help of his friends, which lots of kids can identify with. But we made sure to include details about Sam's Chinese heritage in the food he eats at home, or in the stories his grandma tells him. We really believe funny books have the power to create real positive change in the world. 

Sam Wu is NOT Afraid of Ghosts was selected for BookBuzz, how did it feel to have the book as part of a large-scale National initiative?

We were thrilled when Sam Wu was selected for BookBuzz because we knew it meant that so many readers would have the chance to meet Sam, which felt great. We were also happy it was selected because we wrote it to be as accessible as possible so even reluctant or less confident readers could enjoy it. Nathan Reed's brilliant illustrations also make it super appealing and accessible. 

Now that the series is coming to an end, do you have ideas or plans for future books together and is there anything you can reveal to us?

We have a new series coming out this fall, called Dragon Realm, about a group of kids who meet at a summer camp in China and then discover dragons in the mountain behind camp! It is pitched slightly older than the Sam Wu books, and is longer and not as highly illustrated, but still has similar themes of being brave and facing challenges with the help of your friends. The new series is also much more fantastical and more directly inspired by Chinese myths and legends. And we would love to also keep writing books in the same age range as Sam Wu too...we'll see what happens! 

We are delighted to welcome Nikesh Shukla editor of The Good Immigrant, author, columnist for The Observer and tireless champion for representation in publishing and books to discuss his journey into Young Adult fiction with the publication of Run, Riot.

Run, Riot is my first book for teenagers and it’s an interesting journey, I think, for why I decided to write for teenagers. One of the more inspiring things about working on The Good Immigrant has been the wealth of teenagers who feel represented by the book and that they are seen, their stories valid. Some have said that it’s the first time they’ve read books featuring about people just like them. Others told me that it was the first book they read that wasn’t for school and now they can’t get enough.

So working on The Good Immigrant has been a real vindication of my desire to find young readers of colour and why it’s so important that they see themselves in books.

But my journey to writing YA starts well before that.

In around 2012, I was invited to do some creative writing workshops at a Young Offender’s Institute, not long after my first novel came out. I hadn’t ever really taught creative writing and I didn’t know how I should be in front of the young people. What did they want to get from me, the session, the day? To cut a long story short, I was terrible. I sucked so badly at teaching creative writing that the guards had to intervene and most the kids back to their cells, because I didn’t know how to be with them. I didn’t know how to inspire them or what I wanted them to do. I think, sadly, I wanted them to think I was cool. And when they asked me questions about how much money I earned as a writer, the facade dropped, for them, and for me, and I realised what an utterly stupid thing to wish. To look cool. How facile of me. The thing that stayed with me was that sense of failure: knowing that I could have made a difference.

I decided that the thing I needed to do was youth work. Be with young people, inspire them, help them find their voice. I remember talking to another workshop leader at the YOI, an ex-gang member who had turned his life around and did motivational talks. He impressed on me the importance of inspiring the next generation. And I believed him.

This is how I found myself, a few years later, working on a youth project called Rife magazine, designed to give young people in Bristol where I live a platform to tell their stories in their own voices and talk about the issues directly affecting them.

One of our first team of journalists was a young Asian filmmaker/poet/stand-up called Adibah. One of her first pieces for Rife was called ‘We Need To Talk About Stokes Croft’ and discussed her experiences of growing up in this ‘cool’ area of Bristol, and how it was now utterly gentrified, to the point where she no longer felt welcome there.

It led me down a rabbit hole of exploration about gentrification: how ultimately most of us are complicit in how it manifests. Live in any city in the UK and you will see property developers buy up properties in low income areas, offer out cheap space to artists, who create a cool vibe, which attracts people, which drives up property prices, which in turn then allows those property developers to flip properties for huge amounts of money. This is a very ‘dummies’ guide to gentrification’ way of looking at things, but talking to the young people I worked with in Bristol, this is how they described what was happening in the city they all grew up in.

And I was complicit. I moved here from London cos it was cheaper to live. I’m part of the problem.

Talking to those young people about the types of book they read, a lot of them said the same thing about YA: they didn’t feel it was for them. One of them even went so far as to say she felt ‘UK YA was written by white women in their late twenties for white women in their late twenties who wanted to read the books they wished they’d had in their teens’. Whether this is an accurate reflection of UK YA or not, it is still a valid perception by a young person outside of the industry. However those of us who are inside the industry see it, we have to listen to the consumers who have no insider knowledge. All this young person was, was someone who wanted to feel seen. She wanted to feel like her story was being told.

So I wrote Run, Riot for Adibah and for all the young people I met along the way at Rife, who felt like their stories weren’t being told, and the issues they felt were important weren’t being seen on our bookshelves. This is a thriller about gentrification and corruption and the things we hold on to in order to maintain our communities. I know that young person I mention feels seen. Because this one is for her.