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Friday 15 August 2014

Links: Promoting Diversity in Children's Fiction

Some links to websites and people that challenge stereotypes and promote diversity in fiction for young people.

This is a campaign to ‘take the stickers off’ books for boys and girls, arguing that certain books help compound gender stereotypes and alienate those children who have a preference for doing so not stereotypically ‘boyish’ or ‘girlish’. Many authors, including Philip Pullman, backed the campaign. Usborne chose to no longer publish gender-specific content in direct response. 

Katy Guest is literary editor of The Independent, and chose to back the Let Books Be Books campaign by pledging to no longer review gender-specific books. There are links to her articles here

Beth Cox and Alexandra Strick run the Inclusive Minds project and work as professional editorial consultants on diversity in publishing, offering training to public speaking to manuscript consultation. Having heard Beth speak, she can certainly deliver new and challenging ideas. 

Letterbox Library is a bookseller for parents, teachers and librarians promoting inclusion and diversity in fiction for children, with emphasis on multicultural content. 

Barefoot Books is an incredible children’s bookseller and publisher, with branches in Concord, MA, and in Oxford. Barefoot publishes books with a focus on promoting multiculturalism and environmental awareness. Their offices are above the shop premises, where storytelling becomes a fun, communal activity; story times are hosted at Barefoot and there is a cafe and storytelling chair that children and parents can use when formal sessions are not taking place. The story of their set-up, and breaking of established publishing patterns (namely refusing to sell books via Amazon), is available to read here.

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