Beyond the Secret Garden Children's Literature and Representations of Black and Racially minoritised People

I first encountered Darren Chetty’s work through The Good Immigrant. His chapter, You Can’t Do That! Stories have to be about white people!, took me straight back to primary school. I’d brought in a book to share with the class — the cover showed a girl in a hijab praying, backlit in golden light. Another child brought Winnie the Witch. You can guess which one the teacher chose. I went home and told the story to my mum and her friend, a white woman and an English teacher. My mum’s friend looked at her and said, “I wonder why?” I spent years wondering.

Reading Chetty and Sands-O’Connor’s Beyond the Secret Garden made me realise I hadn’t imagined it. There are structures that make white stories feel central, and for those of us who are minoritised, our existence is too often positioned as peripheral. But what makes this book remarkable isn’t just its truth-telling — it’s its hope. The writing is deeply attentive to what children do with texts, and so it feels both timely and essential for classroom teachers.

That commitment to reimagining English teaching is at the heart of Beyond the Secret Garden. Chetty and Sands-O’Connor have long foregrounded how children’s literature shapes — and distorts — what young readers understand about race, empire, and belonging. Their work became essential reading for English teachers during the pandemic and following the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.

Now, with the rise of the Far Right and Reform’s gains in the local elections, the chapter Powerful Politics lands differently. After watching children march in the Far Right riots of summer 2024, this feels urgent. Chetty and Sands-O’Connor make protest central to what children’s literature should enable — and offer teachers ways to make space for those conversations in the classroom.

This book gives teachers both the language and the courage to act.

Order from English and Media Centre.