Beyond the Secret Garden: books for babies and toddlers

In the latest in our long-running Beyond the Secret Garden series, Darren Chetty and Karen Sands-O’Connor look at books for the very youngest.

Although durable books made of cardboard or cloth have been around since the 1880s, according to researcher Allison Kaplan, board books and toddler books began to take off in the 1940s and 1950s when the Bank Street College of Education in New York began investigating the benefits of books for pre-readers.  Booktrust’s new Writer in Residence is Camilla Reid, who writes books primarily for early years – often in the form of the board book.  In her reflection on her upcoming residency, Reid commented that ‘Early years reading doesn’t mean teaching babies and toddlers to read, it simply means cuddling up and sharing a fun reading experience with a favourite adult’ (Booktrust.org.uk). This adult (or older child)-younger child contact is certainly one of the joys of books for babies, but research shows that pre-readers who have access to books develop reading skills (directionality, for example, or recognising repetition in text, or shapes, objects and colours in illustration).

In the UK, publishers imported books such as Dorothy Kunhardt’s Pat the Bunny (1940), but it was not until the 1970s and 1980s that toddler and board books became a common feature of children’s book sections of British bookstores.  John Burningham’s Little Books (The Baby, The Blanket, The Dog) from the 1970s, Shirley Hughes’ Nursery Collection from the 1980s, and Helen Oxenbury’s 1985 series (Friends, Playing, Dressing, Family, and Working) were popular British books for pre-readers, but like many books, they were aimed at a book-buying adult – which at the time was seen to be primarily middle-class white British parents and grandparents.  The children in the stories for babies and toddlers were almost exclusively white (although all of these authors produced books for reading children with broader representation).

Beginning in the 1990s, health and literacy charities began testing programmes that provided books to new parents.  The Boots Books for Babies project (1998-2000), for example, offered free books to parents who brought their babies in for infant hearing checks; parents of babies who received the free books were encouraged to get library cards for their children and the number of applicants surged (Bailey, Harrison and Brooks, ‘Boots Books for Babies project’). The Booktrust programme Bookstart, first piloted in 1992, began providing book packs to infants and conducting research on their pre-school assessments; although the research was small scale, the data was positive enough that the supermarket Sainsbury’s became a corporate sponsor.  These types of programmes marked a change in what kinds of books and how many were available to young children.  Patrice Aggs Teatime (1995), for example, was published by Walker for Sainsbury’s (the supermarket’s name is branded on the cover) and features one white child and one Black child having a fantastic time over fairy cakes and sippy cups.

The number of board books in these programmes (and Booktrust’s Bookstart is now national and funded by Arts Council England to provide all newborns with books) have broader representation when they feature humans at all.  However, many board books do not include humans; they represent objects (apple, ball, truck), animals, or anthropomorphized transportation (trains with faces).  Most studies on board books and racially minoritised people (readers, characters and authors) come from the US, but the numbers are not encouraging.  Hughes-Hassell and Cox found in 2010 that nearly 60% of board books featuring people had only white people (‘Inside Board Books’). And Elizabeth Dulemba, writing in 2023, noted that ‘while representation in picturebooks is increasing in the US, time will tell if these lessons are reflected in the content of board books as well’ (‘Board Books are for Babies, or are they?’). Different types of board books feature different types of representation, so it is useful to look at the board books available to think about what good representation looks like.

Early Concept Books

Early concept books provide young children with pictures of objects, sometimes in the framework of alphabet, counting, shapes, sensory, or colour learning.  Of these types of book, it is the sensory books (seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, smelling) that are most likely to feature humans, for obvious reasons.  Child’s Play, singled out by Kaplan, Tobin, Dolcetti and McGowan (‘Representation Matters’) in 2022 as providing quality books on racial and ability-based representation, has board books by Annie Kubler focused on the senses, such as What Can I Feel? (2011) in which three out of five feature racially-minoritised children on the cover.

Babies’ and Toddlers’ Daily Lives Books

The books in this category showcase common activities in the lives of baby and toddlers: bedtime, eating, bathtime, going to the park or playgroup.  This category is the most likely to represent racially minoritised children, sometimes as main characters and sometimes as part of the background.  Ladybird’s seasonal walks, A Walk in Spring, A Walk in Summer, A Walk in Autumn and A Walk in Winter (2024) feature a mixed heritage family walking through the same landscapes (town and countryside) throughout the year; the town scenes feature people of different racial backgrounds.  Board Books by Pamela Venus, such as Let’s Go to Playgroup and Let’s go to Bed were originally published by Verna Wilkins’ Tamarind Press in 2004 and then reprinted by Tamarind’s successor, Firetree Books in 2016; interestingly, Penguin Random House failed to reprint these books after they took over Tamarind in 2007.  In contrast to the Ladybird Walks, Venus’s books are more focused on the racially minoritised child character as they travel through the landscape of bedtime or playgroup rituals. Jessica Spanyol’s excellent All About Rosa series features Rosa, a little girl of colour, in everyday adventures like Rosa Loves Cars, Rosa Loves Dinosaurs, Rosa Plays Ball, and Rosa Rides Her Scooter.

Storybooks

Unlike other categories of board books, these books are designed to tell a story with a beginning, middle and end, with characters and (a generally very simple) plot.  Often publishers will take popular picture books and turn them into shorter versions in board books.  Anna McQuinn’s books could be placed in the previous category but given the attention to plot and characterisation they fit this one also. Her Lulu series, illustrated by Rosalind Beardshaw includes Lulu Loves the Library, Lulu Loves Stories, Lulu Gets a Cat and Lulu Loves Flowers. McQuinn’s Zeki series, illustrated by Ruth Hearson includes Zeki Gets a Checkup, Zeki Can Swim!, Zeki Sleep Tight, Zeki Loves Mummy, Zeki Loves Daddy, Zeki Eats Out, Zeki Rise and Shine, Zeki Goes to the Park, Zeki Hikes with Daddy, and the forthcoming Zeki Goes to the Market.

Books that are focused on parents’ interests

These books are often focused beyond the understanding of babies and toddlers – board books that introduce the ‘classics’, for example – but many are designed to support parental and cultural values, emphasising environmental, arts-based, religious or global concepts.  Barefoot Books is one publisher that has a number of these, including board books based on life in various countries.  Barefoot has been careful to try and engage illustrators and authors with some connection to the country, such as publishing British Congolese poet Mel Nyoko and Congolese Angolan British illustrator Joelle Avelino for Our World: Democratic Republic of Congo (2024). The book includes elements of a daily life book and a counting book, with a short glossary of words in Lingala, Tshiluba, and Swahili.

Dr Darren Chetty is a writer and a lecturer at UCL with research interests in education, philosophy, racism, children’s literature and hip-hop culture. He contributed to The Good Immigrant, edited by Nikesh Shukla, and has since published five books as co-author and co-editor. He tweets at @rapclassroom.

Karen Sands-O’Connor is a Visiting Professor of Education at the University of Sheffield. Her book British Activist Authors Addressing Children of Colour (Bloomsbury 2022) won the 2024 Children’s Literature Association Honor Book Award.

Darren and Karen’s book Beyond the Secret Garden: Racially Minoritised People in British Children’s Books is out now, published by English Media Centre.

Books mentioned:

Helen Oxenbury Baby Board Books, Walker Books, O/P

A Walk in Spring, Rose Cobden, illus Hannah Abbo, Ladybird, 978-0241615430, £9.99 board book

Also: A Walk in Summer, 978-0241615454; A Walk in Winter, 978-0241615492; A Walk in Autumn 978-0241615478

Booky Girl Lula series, Anna McQuinn, illus Rosalind Beardshaw, Alanna Max, £8.99 pbk

Zeki series, Anna McQuinn, illus Ruth Hearson, Alanna Max, £7.99 pbk

Our World: Democratic Republic of Congo, Mel Nyoko, illus Joelle Avelino, Barefoot Books, 979-8888592311, £7.99 pbk

What Can I Feel?, Annie Kubler, Child’s Play, 978-1846433740, £4.99

All About Rosa series, Jessica Spanyol, Child’s Play, £5.99 pbk