New Year Predictions 2023
The pandemic, war in Europe and a cost of living crisis. The last few years have thrown up some very unwelcome events. How optimistic should we be for 2023 and what will be the key things shaping the world of children’s books? Books for Keeps asked those in the know for their predictions.
Professor Teresa Cremin, FAcSS, FRSA, FEA
Co-Director, Literacy and Social Justice Centre, Open University
2023 looks to be a challenging but engaging year. With less resource to spend on books, I think the quality of children’s texts will be foregrounded by teachers and schools keen to kindle, stoke and sustain the elemental fire of reading in the young. Intense heat may accumulate around the diversities agenda, but surely common sense and continual recognition of all young people’s realities will follow through, supported by the new DfE Reading Framework: Developing Reading in Years 2-9 (expected in April). This is likely to become a focal point in England, with attention to text selection, progression and complexity and the critical role of professional knowledge and use of texts. How teachers can nurture the habit of reading, facilitating autonomy and developing positive reader identities, as well as readers’ skills, alongside discussions about the nature of comprehension are likely to characterise the year ahead. I suspect, these embers, particularly of the comprehension debate, will linger long into 2024.
Diana Gerald
Chief Executive, BookTrust
For BookTrust, 2023 will see increasing level of challenge to delivering on our mission of getting children reading regularly and by choice. We are increasingly focusing our work on helping children from low-income families reap the lifechanging benefits of reading and close the gap with their peers in terms of career prospects, academic achievement and mental health outcomes. However, it is precisely these low-income families which are being hit the hardest by the current cost of living crisis and by real terms cuts to the public services and local charities who provide them with support. So not only are families being hit hard, but so are the libraries, schools and local charities with whom we work.
Whilst this is, without doubt, a very challenging backdrop to our work it also is an opportunity to talk about the fact that children’s books and getting children to become regular readers is an incredibly cost-effective way to transform lives. I expect that in 2023 the value-for-money that children’s literature represents will become more widely recognised and a bigger feature of our public discourse.
Louise Johns-Shepherd
Chief Executive, CLPE
There’s a great deal that I’m looking forward to in 2023 but top of the list has to be children’s poetry. 2023 will see the twentieth CLiPPA and we have a brilliant judging panel looking at the most amazing collection of submissions this year. We are also hatching a super-secret, super exciting plan which will celebrate CLPE’s role as the National Centre for Children’s Poetry, and we are thrilled to be working with Macmillan to celebrate their Big Amazing Poetry Book and 30 years of Gaby Morgan’s wonderful overseeing of their poetry list, working with Macmillan on some very interesting research about poetry in primary schools. Our work with our Patron and Children’s Laureate Joseph Coelho will continue as he uses his laureateship to celebrate all things poetry and encourage children to write for themselves. I’m looking forward to finding new poets and discovering new poems from old friends, and to seeing poetry at its rightful place front and centre of children’s literature.
Dawn Woods, Member Development Librarian, SLA
One challenge in libraries which will be increasingly important in 2023 will be questions around representation in books from underrepresented parts of society – books dealing with issues of race, gender, sexuality, and identity. Our society is a diverse population, all deserving representation in our literature without censorship.
Ayaan Mohamud’s You Think You Know Me is shocking and powerful but the everyday experience of racism for many students. Patrick Ness and Tea Bendix have collaborated to bring Different For Boys – spot on regarding homophobia.
Lesley Parr’s Where The River Takes Us cementing Parr’s name in historical adventures for upper primary/lower secondary age children and Natasha Farrant’s The Rescue of Ravenwood, about guarding our extraordinary environment, are two MG titles to look forward to.
In picture books Laura Baker and Sandra de la Prada’s All The Wonderful Ways celebrates books and reading and in This George Webster, Claire Taylor and Tim Budgen have collaborated to produce a story from the authentic perspective of George.
The School Library Association (SLA) continue to support everyone running a school library so don’t hesitate to contact us – www.sla.org.uk
Barbara Blenheim
Editor of emagazine, Education Consultant, English and Media Centre
In 2023 I’m hoping for a strong emphasis on YA fiction in education and a growing recognition of the sheer range and quality of what is on offer in newly published work. I’d like to see contemporary fiction cosying up to books from the past, establishing warm connections, with those close, loving relationships allowing us to see both in a fresh light. For example, inventive new novels using poetic form, such as those by Sarah Crossan or Manjit Mann, can be read as part of a tradition of narrative experimentation, from Laurence Stern to Virginia Woolf and other modernist and post-modern writers. Contemporary Gothic can sit side by side with classic Gothic texts. YA writers speaking to, and speaking back to, the canon in diverse and exciting ways, is something to be celebrated. I hope to see more wonderful examples of that this coming year.
Letterbox Library
We continue to witness a decline in those suffocating, heavily gendered, pink/blue-covered, ‘for’ girls/boys-titled, children’s books. Amidst an uptick in titles which now chip away at gender stereotypes, there is a growing presence of anthropomorphic characters no longer saddled by gendered pronouns (in truth, these defaulted to ‘masculine’) or hyper-gendered visual markers. Very excitingly, we are also witnessing the stirrings of gender free characterisations and non-binary (NB) representations outside of YA fiction. Those few and far between NB secondary/multicast characters – e.g. in Middle Grade novels, Harriet Versus the Galaxy (2019) and StrangeWorlds: Travel Agency (2020) and the NB child included in the 14-strong cast of picture book You Can! (2021) – will, we predict, crescendo clamorously and joyfully onto your shelves in 2023. NB author, Harry Woodgate, has just recently gifted us Timmy, a protagonist blissfully free of gendered-pronouns (Timid, October 2022; see also Tasmanian author Daniel Gray-Barnett’s Katerina Cruickshanks). They’ve also gone on to illustrate the cover for NB author, L D Lapinski’s, much anticipated March 2023, MG novel, starring the titular NB character, Jamie. The following month will see Meg Grehen’s MG The Lonely Book. Long may this populating of gender-busting, gender-free and NB characterisations thrive. This is surely, finally, their time.
Miranda McKearney
Founder, EmpathyLab
Last year saw exciting developments in the way the book world got behind a growing empathy movement, building on the scientific research showing the empathy-building power of reading. 2023 promises to see further growth in this exciting, much needed movement.
46 children’s publishers having joined a collective called Empathy Builders, which is committed to growing Empathy Day into a major force for change – helping more and more children learn about empathy, and have empathy experiences through engaging with books and their creators. Last year’s Empathy Day achieved a 24% increase in the number of children reached – now up to 403,000.
The 46 publishers have adopted an Empathy Manifesto with a series of strategic pledges to further develop the book industry’s contribution to building a more empathetic society. 2023 will see the roll out of training for authors, illustrators and publishing staff, inspiring them to make the most of their role in developing empathy.
The year begins with the launch of EmpathyLab’s 2023 Read for Empathy book collection. These 65 books for 3–16-year-olds kick start year-round empathy work in schools and libraries, work which is having a real impact in communities, as this Deputy Head from Pennar School testifies: ‘Our children have become much kinder and more empathetic – I’ve been blown away’
Piers Torday
The debate over celebrity interference in the children’s book market should continue. While midlist authors’ earnings remain low, the star-covered ceiling imposed on sales by parachuting in big names from unrelated fields to hoover up precious coverage and resource will be hammered on only harder from below.
Sustainability in children’s publishing could also set agendas this year. We need a thoughtful revision of the current shiny, foiled, high-finish design aesthetic in the children’s book retail environment, but Waterstones must engage with the issue first.
Graphic novels will continue to gain popularity and deserve greater critical attention. In return, I wonder if there will be more heavily illustrated children’s prose fiction.
The two biggest books of the year will be by two of our most talented and exceptional storytellers – In the Shadow of the Wolf Queen by Kiran Millwood Hargrave (Hachette) and Impossible Creatures by Katherine Rundell. I can’t wait.
Caroline Jones
Director and CEO, the Story Museum
At the Story Museum we create powerful encounters with stories for children and families. In 2023, we’re looking forward to celebrating the monumental series Choose Your Own Adventure in a new installation in which visitors will create their own branching narrative through 33 playable boxes. Giving young people agency, enabling them to drive their own narrative, is crucial if they are to feel positive about their future.
Stories to Save the World launching in May, is our creative exploration of how stories can support families to be hopeful for the planet. Writer Chitra Soundar (You’re Safe With Me) and illustrator Barry Falls (Wild Child) are collaborating with us on a new immersive exhibition based on Aesop’s fable The Ant and the Grasshopper, inviting families to step into a fantastical world of insects…
I’m excited by the increasing representation in children’s books with imminent titles such as You’re So Amazing by James Catchpole and Xanthe and the Ruby Crown by Jasbinder Bilan. I admire Elle McNicol’s initiative the Adrien Award and am looking forward to the TV adaptation of A Kind of Spark. So too, the stage versions of Noughts & Crosses, adapted from Malorie Blackman’s novel by Pilot Theatre and Neil Gaiman’s The Ocean at the end of the Lane, produced by the National Theatre, both on a UK tour.
