This fundraiser to produce 10 kids book is at 94%. It showcases a rich diversity of voices, experiences & themes & features under-represented people of colour, LGBTQ+ & disabled characters.

A #thread on why we should all support it:
#allyship https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/10-stories-to-make-a-difference

These books feature kids of colour; one of the most achingly beautiful books has a protagonist with cerebral palsy who daydreams of swimming; there is a trans dragon (trans dragons are dragons!), a leabian mermaid; a refugee child who makes a friend...
#10StoriestoMakeADifference

These are stories that don’t just ‘celebrate difference’ (how I hate that phrase!) but express doubts, hopes and fears of children who feel they are different.

These are stories about building radical solidarities. They teach radical way of loving ourselves and eachother.

But most importantly these are stories about children who don’t usually get featured in stories.

But these are not stories *just* FOR children who are not included in most stories. These are stories for ALL children, for their parents, teachers and ALL of us because....

...these are stories about valuing difference in other and ourselves, about learning equality and inclusion, about learning how to build radical solidarities.

Why are these important? If you like performing allyship for kudos, you won’t like what I say next so walk away now

I am going to discuss one axis of exclusion in children’s literature nly because I have some statistics about it and because it has been something I often talk about: exclusion by race in children’s books.

As per @clpe1’s 2020 #ReflectingRealities report, 33.5% of children are from a minority ethnic background.

Report here https://clpe.org.uk/clpes-reflecting-realities-survey-ethnic-representation-within-uk-children%E2%80%99s-literature-published

Yet only “7% of the children’s books published in the UK over the last 3 years feature characters of colour.”

Hold these two stats in your mind while I caveat something in the next tweet

While these stats are about race, we need to remember that kids of colour are also LGBTQ+, may live with disabilities, experience poverty (actually more in UK do because structural racism).

But also kids across the board experience exclusions and inequalities intersectionally

With this in mind, that we MUST think intersectionally, let’s go back to that statistic: 33.5% of kids are from a minoritised background.

That is ONE in THREE kids on the playground, in class, in society. That is ONE in THREE person amongst us.

And yet they don’t see themselves in books that stocked in most bookshops. Shout out here to incredible activist booksellers like @BooksRound @thisisbooklove who work all year round to counter this, change this terrible lack

And they don’t see themselves in books in school (and other) libraries.

They don’t see themselves in books included on their syllabus. In stories read to them in class. Or taught them. Except perhaps as issue based lesson (hold this though we weill return to it)

Even when these kids make up majority of kids in a school, they don’t find themselves reflected in stories. Even when they are in places with significant, majority populations of minoritised people like themselves, bookshops often remain dedicatedly white (hello London )

This incredible essay by Rudine Sims Bishop on why we need to see ourselves, eachother and others in our stories is now THIRTY years old so we really can’t plead ignorance or oversight

https://scenicregional.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Mirrors-Windows-and-Sliding-Glass-Doors.pdf

But let’s go back to that one in three kids in UK schools.

What are the curriculum, the libraries and bookshops, the teachers and schools, the publishing industry telling them?

What are they and their majoritised classmates learning? And learning daily?

What is the unspoken lesson that ALL of the kids are learning when they SEE and EXPERIENCE daily exclusions and inequalities not only in their lived experience but also in stories, in books, in ‘learning materials’?

The lesson (& no, intent means shit so if you are a parent, teacher, librarian, administrator, don’t @ me your fragility. Sit with it till you understand) the kids are learning is that SOME kids matter less. That only SOME kids deserve the full humanity that stories bestow on us

The lesson being taught by the silences and exclusions in children’s books is that not all kids are equal.

Thus lesson is terrible and traumatic and hateful not only for those minoritised, excluded and targetted by this hateful teaching but also for those centred by it

The exclusion from stories teaches the minoritised, excluded and oppressed that they aren’t equal, that they are less than human, that they don’t matter. But it also teaches those included that they are better, they are MORE than equal, that they can justifiable hate the excluded

I am not naive enough to think that all of us want an equal, fair, just society for all of us. I know inequality benefits all too many people. That our world rewards those who can hate and hate well with wealth and power

But I also know that there are many of us who DO want a fair, just, equal world, if not for ourselves then for those who follow. So this thread and my repeated plea for support of initiatives like #10StoriestoMakeADifference is aimed at them

And remember this? I asked you to hold this thought earlier. So this one is for parents, teachers, publishers, really all of us who only see stories of minoritised people are ‘issue-based’ or ‘learning opportunities’ - think hard about what this teaches! https://twitter.com/profsunnysingh/status/1345338353101774848

Let’s think what it says to that one in three kids when not only are they excluded but the only time/way their story is taught is as an issue to be managed/solved, as a learning opportunity for majoritised kids who can then feel better, moral, more than equal to their classmate?

What does it say to that 1 in 3 kids who is thus framed not as a human but a problem to be solved?

That they - their lives, experiences, pain - only matter as teaching opportunities for their more than equal peers?

What happens when SOME kids get all their lives reflected in stories but also learn that those excluded are not only less than them?

That it is their right to to consume pain and trauma of minoritised people because those people only matter as ‘learning opportunities’?

Stories are life and death. Stories are what form us and continually shape us as individuals and collectives.

The stories we create, share, tell ourselves and eachother determine if we hate or love ourselves and eachother, if we lift eachother up or crush eachother

And while it is comfortable to stick to stories that are only mirrrors (see the Sims Bishop essay above), our very survival as a society, even species, depends on stories that teach us to value fairness, equality, justice.

More than ever before we need stories that teach us ever-expanding humanity of our peers, that teach us not only maximum empathy but how to build radical solidarities.

As we stand at the edge if the anthropocene extinction, we need these more than ever, and more urgently

On a personal note: I don’t write for children. I don’t have kids of my own.

I am however on the board of @PopUpFestival which I jouned some years ago because I can’t bear the thought of any child growing up feeling excluded, marginalised, isolated, derided, hated, feared.

And I can not, will not, tolerate the thought of passing on an unfair world to those that follow.

I may not succeed, but I’ll be damned if I don’t try!

If you can support (no donation is too small), or pre-order, or share the #10StoriestoMakeADifference project, I shall be grateful https://twitter.com/profsunnysingh/status/1345328358645706752

But more than that, it isn’t just supporting this project. Justice work is a daily, ongoing ethical, moral active practice.

And change happens because we think and act ethically every day. Once you get into the habit, trust me, it isn’t hard

Ending with the ever wise James Baldwin:

“The world changes according to the way people see it, and if you alter, even but a millimeter the way people look at reality, then you can change it.”

And stories help us SEE differently. See? Simple!