We books in our family.
I counted our children’s books today... we have 272.

Of those books, 161 are about people (rather than animals/monsters/ fantastical creatures!)

Of those 161, all of the main characters were white... except these 6 books.

6 out of 161.

Cont...

I found another 42 that had a token person of colour in somewhere - a single brown child in a group, one person in a crowd in a headscarf (and this was generous counting, I was even accepting the questionable ones)...

Now you can say - well why don’t you look for more diverse books, well, I will.
But when we bought these books I wasn’t looking for white books either. I was looking for funny books, scary ones, adventurous ones... books we see on shelves, hear about, see in school or tv...

I will shop differently, I will shop more consciously and I will proactively seek out more diverse books for my children.

But I also hope that before long I don’t have to go ‘looking’ and they’re just there, in my face and flooding the shelves.

Share with me your recommendations of diverse books. Have a look at your own bookshelves and the world you’re showing to the little people in your families because books make up a huge part of it.

That is all. Thanks for staying with me!

And to the followers I’ll lose because this isn’t a picture of a cake, #sorrynotsorry but this matters.

And no I don’t iron my bedsheets, I’ve got two young kids, I can’t go for a wee on my own let alone plug an iron in