Editorial 267
The last two months have been exceptionally busy ones. We have a new government and a new Waterstones Children’s Laureate, while the winners of many of the UK’s leading children’s book awards including the CILIP Carnegie Medals, the Children’s Book Award and the CLiPPA, have all been announced.
Bridget Phillipson, the new education secretary, is pledging a transformation in education including the recruitment of 6,500 more teachers, free breakfast clubs in all primary schools, much more focus on early years education, reform and broadening of the national curriculum, and more access to music, art, drama for all children. All of this is needed and is welcomed by schools and teachers everywhere.
Our new Children’s Laureate, Frank Cottrell-Boyce, is also keen to make real change happen, quickly, in order to address the inequalities that have grown over the last 14 years. He too has a focus on early years and ensuring that books become more of the daily experience for the very young. He’s also determined to increase the national conversation about children’s books, something that naturally all of us at BfK support. Read our interview with Frank in this issue.
We turn our attention to the subject of inclusivity and representation again in this issue, with a guest comment piece from Sunny Singh, one of the founders of the Jhalak Prize and an interview with Ken Wilson-Max in which he talks about his new inclusive imprint for HarperCollins Children’s Books, Kumusha Books.
This year’s Carnegie Medal for Writing was awarded to the retiring Children’s Laureate, Joseph Coelho for his verse novel The Boy Lost in the Maze, but congratulations too to Nathanael Lessore, who won the Branford Boase Award for his debut Steady For This, and to Matt Goodfellow who was awarded the CLiPPA, CLPE Children’s Poetry Award, for The Final Year. Both Steady For This and The Final Year are contemporary stories featuring kids who seldom take starring roles in children’s books and, refreshingly, both are written in the language that is natural to their protagonists. Find out more about Lessore on the Branford Boase Award website and there will be an in-depth interview with Matt Goodfellow in our September issue.
New initiatives
Inclusive Books for Children (IBC), the new charity that exists to make inclusive books mainstream, has launched the IBC Bookshelf, a UK-wide campaign aimed at independent booksellers to help encourage sales of inclusive stories and raise the profiles of their creators.
IBC is offering quarterly book lists to UK independent bookshops, highlighting the best-in-class inclusive children’s books for booksellers to feature in-store. Booksellers will also receive Point of Sale materials, including shelf wobblers, posters and bookmarks, to help them promote the campaign. The campaign is entirely free to take part in.
Booksellers who have signed up to the IBC Bookshelf so far include Chepstow Books & Gifts, Chepstow, Chicken and Frog, Essex, Kibworth Books, Leicestershire, Mr B’’s Emporium, Bath, Norfolk Children’’s Books Centre, Norfolk, The Children’s Bookshop, London and The Rabbit Hole, North Lincolnshire
Marcus Satha, co-founder of IBC, says ‘The IBC Bookshelf has had such a positive reception so far. We know how difficult an environment booksellers operate in, and we know how powerful it can be to see yourself reflected in stories. Our campaign aims to champion independent booksellers and reach as many young readers and their families as possible with our recommendations and reviews, which will also help to achieve our mission of bringing inclusive stories further into the mainstream.’
Join the Book Squad?
HarperCollins UK has announced the launch of Book Squad, a new collaboration between education and children’s imprints Collins, HarperCollins Children’s Books, Farshore and Barrington Stoke, aimed at supporting reading for pleasure in primary schools. Book Squad has been developed to help ‘break down and dispel the perception of reading as a subject to learn, instead creating a culture where reading is enjoyed’. Hosted on collins.co.uk, Book Squad will give free access to unique content about children’s literature, in-depth research, guidance, reading recommendations for all ages and interests, and free resources for use in the classroom. Book Squad also features exclusive content from HarperCollins’ children’s authors and illustrators.
Help co-create research about poetry and young lives
Poetry By Heart and Manchester Metropolitan University have combined forces, with financial support from the Arts and Humanities Research Council, to get to the bottom of the question of what poetry does for young lives with a three-year research project.
Making the Case: What does poetry do for young lives?’seeks to address a key challenge faced by poetry organisations working with young people: how to speak with confidence and credibility about why such work matters. While a wealth of anecdotal experience indicates that engaging with poetry affords various kinds of value, research to date has been scarce and limited in scope. The project aims to produce an authoritative and pioneering account of poetry’s impact on young people. ‘It is vital to all those involved in this project that the research should not be undertaken “behind closed doors”’ says Mark Thomson, who is undertaking the research, ‘and that everyone with a stake in the potential outcomes (young people, teachers, caregivers, poets, etc.) should be given the opportunity to participate in the design and implementation.’
If you’d like to contribute to the project, email info@poetrybyheart.org.uk explaining what interests you about taking part.
Thanks as always to everyone for reading Books for Keeps. Enjoy the summer!
