This article is in the Letterbox Library Recommends Category
Letterbox Library Recommends: Tower Blocks Rise Up
In the latest in our new column, Letterbox Library recommends books that celebrate equality, diversity and inclusion. Their theme here, the tower blocks rising up in picture books.
Portrayals of working class and economically disadvantaged families have traditionally been viewed as inconsistent with the world of picture books. Publishing leans in to offering the youngest readers messages of hope, play and fun, very often within pastoral sites and with a heavy note of nostalgia. These worlds are then populated by (and so also associated with) the white middle classes, leaving, of course, huge swathes of children unrepresented. Housing estates are anathema to these landscapes, literal eyesores. And so, it feels like an especially bold interruption to see tower blocks rising up in recent picture books.
Thunder Boots introduces ‘the smallest person in Primrose Towers’, an effervescent (white) child who we see at either end of her school day, thundering about at home. While teetering on the edge of fantasy – the residents include a classical trio ensemble, the exterior is draped in flowering climbers – the incidental inclusion of the high rise is very welcome.
The tower block in Luna Loves Christmas is more realistically drawn with its broken lifts and concrete steps. It is also ‘democratised’, given equal status to the other homes and inhabitants who Luna (mixed race) and her mum meet on their food bank deliveries: the McKenzies in their terraced house overlooked by cranes, ‘Old Ms Pothers’ in her rural cottage and the Sandhus on the block’s 12th floor. This gentle messaging is carried through to the story’s conclusion. All the characters are brought together in a festive dinner at the town hall ‘where everyone is welcome, so no one is alone.’
The towers in Children of the Throne are a portal in to a magical subterranean world. 
Here, a band of child residents (different skin tones) encounter a ‘tree-grown man’ sunk in to his ‘root-grown throne’ who portends an environmental apocalypse. Back above ground, children climb down from their towers and stride out as newly made eco warriors, bearing crowns of hazel stems.
Elsewhere, the tower block environment themselves become a pivot for quiet community activism, even, found family. In Errol’s Garden, a solid grey block is pierced by colourful windows where we see residents watering meagre plant collections. The protagonist (of colour) extends everyone’s reach by bringing them together to create a shared roof top garden. In Puddling! three families pick a rainy day to climb down the steps of their respective flats and enter the estate’s communal space. Ignoring a minimally furnished playground, the toddlers 
‘puddle’ with glee, splashing and stomping in their ready-made water park. The rhythmic, onomatopoeic text pulls the reader in to their irrepressible play. The final pages show bonds cemented with the families snuggled together on a sofa.
The Concrete Garden by Bob Graham opens with a vast row of high rise flats, the tops and ends guillotined by the pages. A gaggle of children emerge, ‘spill[ed] out like sweets from a box.’ Amanda, a (Black) girl from the 15th floor, enters the shared concrete space and chalks out a bright flower. Toddlers and children tumble in to add their own flourishes – foliage, a bird of paradise, an alien invader. Graham’s trademark ‘tracking’ shots deliver a bird’s eye view of this emerging ‘beautiful and exotic garden’ and then flip back to a young Hijabi woman leaning down from her balcony to snap a photo. Soon, the very many residents stretch out of their windows delivering a chorus of applause while the children take a bow. A seemingly inhospitable environment has been transformed, not through magic and not by idealising or ennobling the setting nor its inhabitants. Instead the landscape has been shifted by a recognisable, gloriously diverse, community and with the tools they have to hand, chalk and cardboard boxes. A culmination of small acts by ordinary people in the shadows of tower blocks becomes a site of hope, play and fun- for all.
Est. 1983, Letterbox Library is an online children’s bookseller specialising in diverse, inclusive and social justice themed children’s books.
Books mentioned, all available from Letterbox Library:
Thunder Boots, Naomi Jones & Rebecca Ashdown (Oxford University Press, 2023)
Luna Loves Christmas, Joseph Coelho & Fiona Lumbers (Andersen Press, 2023)
Children of the Throne, Joseph Coelho & Richard Johnson (Frances Lincoln Children’s Books, 2025)
Errol’s Garden, Gillian Hibbs (Child’s Play, 2018)
Puddling!, Emma Perry & Claire Alexander (Walker Books, 2022)
The Concrete Garden, Bob Graham (Walker Books, 2025)
