CLPE release new Reflecting Realities report

November 30th 2023

Today CLPE revealed their 6th annual Reflecting Realities report, the ground-breaking survey of ethnic representation in UK children's books. This year's report celebrates that 30% of the children’s picturebooks, fiction and non-fiction titles published in 2022 featured racially minoritised characters, up from 4% in the first report in 2017.

However, for the first year in its history the report does not show an increase in representation across all text types. Only fiction titles showed an increase in racially minoritised presence, while there was a year-on-year decrease in presence for non-fiction and picturebooks. Minoritised representation in fiction increased from 11% in 2021 to 15% in 2022, while representation in non-fiction dropped from 41% in 2021 to 30% in 2022, and picturebooks from 61% to 52% year on year. 

The increase in representative fiction was welcomed by CLPE as much needed and going some way towards closing the marked gap between the text types, but warns it will be important to continue to carefully monitor the gap to ensure that the gains made in recent years are not undermined through a regression of presence.

Farrah Serrouk, CLPE's Executive Director of Research and Development says: 'We welcome the increase in overall output and were pleased to encounter more variation in the breadth of realities reflected in the literature we reviewed. We encourage publishers and creatives to build on the traction of recent years and continue to strive towards improving the volume and quality of titles that meaningfully reflect realities available to young readers.’ 

Books featured in this year's report               browse all

About CLPE The Centre for Literacy in Primary Education is a UK based children's literacy charity working with primary schools. Their work raises the achievement of children's reading and writing by helping schools to teach literacy creatively and effectively, putting quality children’s books at the heart of all learning. find out more clpe

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