Editorial 280

How are children’s books reflecting disability

Reflecting Disability has announced the results of its study into the representation of disabled people in children’s books. In research funded by Arts Council England and using analysis carried out by The Reading Agency, the study shows that 10% of children’s books feature disabled people in some way. This is the first project of its kind to offer a comprehensive exploration of the extent and quality of disabled characters in picture books, fiction and non-fiction across a full year (2024) of UK children’s publishing for 3-11 year olds.

With 90% of children’s books not yet featuring disabled people in any way, the findings highlight opportunities for publishers and creators to build on the promising initial picture. The study also found that books rarely reflected the specific conditions, impairments and differences that children most commonly experience (social/behavioural, learning and mental health). Books depicted characters with mobility conditions (for example, wheelchair users), deaf characters and those with vision impairments more often but usually placed them in the background. Many representations of disabled people and the equipment they use also lacked accuracy and/or consistency – something often highlighted in reviews by our disability specialist, Rebecca Butler.

Beth Cox, Creative Editorial Inclusion Consultant and Reflecting Disability Co-Facilitator says, ‘For true inclusion we need to go beyond representation. The stories that were truly nuanced, where the disabled characters came across as fully rounded people, were a joy to read. But there were a frustrating number of books where a small tweak, or just asking the right questions at the development stage, could have completely transformed the representation and made it more authentic. I would urge publishers and creators to consider the whole context of a disabled person’s life and convey that through nuance rather than didacticism. To show rather than tell.’

The study also analysed potential barriers to reading, including inaccessible design and layout, hard to read text and language that makes the book unnecessarily hard to understand and 67% of books reviewed had at least one barrier to reading.

Reflecting Disability will launch a toolkit later this year which will provide in-depth analysis of the quantitative and qualitative data and, most importantly, practical guidance to support publishers and creators. While it is encouraging to see many positive representations, the findings also highlight significant opportunities for publishers, authors, and illustrators to ensure that more children can see themselves, their families and their communities reflected in the stories they read; the toolkit could make a measurable difference.

Time to talk about multilingualism

Young people in the UK are increasingly multilingual. More than 20% of school pupils are recorded as using more than one language according to the schools census, while over 300 languages are spoken across the population. Yet this is rarely reflected in the books they read. Only a small percentage of the approximately 10,000 children’s books published in the UK each year are translations according to Outside in World.

At the same time, languages education in the UK is in critical decline. Major universities are cutting degree programmes and regional ‘cold spots’ for languages education are emerging. If professionals are not trained to use and understand how languages work, what creative potential are we losing to children’s books and publishing industry in the UK? What readers are we not serving?

On 17 September, a new, hybrid festival and conference, Languages of Children’s Books: Celebrating Translation and Linguistic Diversity, will bring together publishers, translators, librarians, researchers and literacy advocates to discuss these intersecting issues. Participants will explore how translation and multilingual storytelling can open up reading for young people, as part of the UK’s National Year of Reading.

The festival is free to attend online, with registration available until 16 September (so be quick). After the festival, recordings of panel sessions and further information about exhibitors, associated organisations, and how readers can get involved will be available from the Centre for Book Cultures and Publishing.