Diversifying the Writing and Reading Circles

'When we put down a story, we will never be zero' (Roy)

From the independently published book Princess and the Power of Melanin (2018)

Why we read and why writers write...beautifully told by Arundhati Roy: 'Sometimes I need to write to think – to love, to be loved, to never forget your own insignificance, to never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you, to seek joy in the saddest places, to pursue beauty to its lair, to never simplify what is complicated, or complicate what is simple, to respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch, to try and understand, to never look away. And never, never to forget'.

And here is why a more diverse place for writers and readers is needed - because the world has never only been white, Christian, middle-class and heterosexual; because Black and People of Colour are very much part of national (w)holes, because children of all shades and hues have a right to see themselves represented as they are, to see their colour and religion in the police officers there to protect us, in the doctors there to heal us and in the parents and teachers there to nurture us and most importantly, a diverse place of union is needed because it doesn't yet exist. Far too many children's books here in Germany where I live, alienate and pathologise difference, reproduce and perpetuate a fake, partial and biased world which many kids cannot identify with. In this light, I would like to mention this book list to support anti-racist activism, reposted from the Official Journal Blog.

Here are some alarming observations quoted in the text:

'As early as 3–6 months of age, babies begin to notice and express preference by race (Bar-Haim, 2006). Between the ages of 3 and 5, children begin to apply stereotypes, categorize people by race, and express racial bias (Winkler, 2009). White North American children begin to report negative explicit attitudes toward people of color as early as age 3 (Baron, 2006). By age 3, children also use racist language intentionally — and use it to create social hierarchies, evoke emotional reactions in people of color, and produce harmful results (Van Ausdale, 2001). By 6 years of age, children demonstrate a pro-white/anti-Black bias (Baron, 2006). Adolescents, when looking at Black people’s faces, show higher levels of activity in the area of the brain known for its fight-flight reactions (Telzer, 2013).

The text further emphasises: 'To counter racist socialization and racial bias, experts recommend acknowledging and naming race and racism with children as early and as often as possible. Children’s books are one of the most effective and practical tools for initiating these critical conversations, and can also be used to model what it means to resist and dismantle oppression'

The 31 children's books listed in the Official Journal Blog consist mostly of empowering Black figures in American history whose stories have been 'fictionalised' in picture books for children. Names include Malcolm X, Lena Horne, Arturo Schomburg, Viola Desmond and Florence Mills. The discrimination and segregation faced by Hispanic Americans are also thematised in a few of the listed books. This is an example of how we can start to empower our kids and try to seek out local examples to reinforce the message, while counteracting mainstream, harmful examples.

Empowerment does not only start with selecting appropriate material and ensuring that your child has a broad range of 'mirror' and 'window' books. It is also about discussing the books you may find unworthy, about daring to criticise a book with a child and saying what you would have liked to see happen, about saying how sick and tired you are of only blonde, blue-eyed protagonists and inviting your child to change the hair and skin colour in the 'sacred' text, it's about daring to change the pronouns in the stories you read and being astonished by the deep-rooted patriarchy and established gender roles....it's about opening your child's imagination to the reality of books - pictures and stories that someone made up...but these stories can be changed, adjusted and rewritten when it doesn't represent you!

Diversity without the Label

In Conversation with Karin Beese, Author of the Nelly und die Berlinchen Series

 In 2019, 'Treasure Hunt', the second book of the Nelly series, was released.

Author Profile

Karin Beese grew up in Sachsen, Germany. 

She studied Communications and Mathematics in Dresden. Beese has worked in environmental politics and development for many years and currently lives and works in Benin (since October 2019). 

She is the founder of the HaWandel Label and has worked with producers in Cameroun to create a fair and transparent pricing system for their products. She is the mother of three girls and her interests include diversity and empowerment, global justice and sustainable environments.

The author was kind enough to answer the questions below and talk about her first experience as a writer of children's books. I have previously discussed her first Berlinchen book in one of my earlier blog posts entitled 'Being Different being me' which you can read here.


Can you please introduce the Nelly und die Berlinchen series to our readers?

Nelly und die Berlinchen is a Berlin-based imaginative picture book series. Pre-schoolers can immerse themselves in the everyday adventures of the three friends Nelly, Amina and Hannah. Written in verse, the Berlin girls are never out of ideas. They have fun, disagree but always work out their problems together. The books present non-discriminatory diverse illustrations with special attention to skin colour, religion and family structures. They focus on friendship, family and the environment in the lives of children and bring a smile to the faces of parents and older siblings.


You crowdfunded and self-published the books. Why?

We crowdfunded the printing of both our Berlinchen books. We first wrote to big publishing houses but waited for months without a reply. What’s more, we had heard that publishers sometimes quite heavily influence the book’s layout and we really wanted to maintain our independence. That’s the reason I started my own small publishing house, HaWandel. It was actually quite simple but of course, a great risk as well. I had to self-finance the printing of the first edition of the first Berlinchen book. The positive feedback from the crowdfunding initiative was very encouraging and I rounded this off with my private savings to finish the project.

What was the reception of your two books like?

The feedback for both Nelly und die Berlinchen books has really surpassed our expectations. Even now, four years after the first publication, we still regularly receive mails or online reviews of our first book and people all over Germany thank us for creating it – parents joke about being sick of reading the story to their kids or we hear from grandparents who are grateful for having finally found the perfect birthday present for their grandkids. We also receive quite moving responses, like that of a mother whose daughter can’t get enough of the book because there is finally a father in it who looks like hers! Our experiences through reading presentations also help us appreciate how differently kids relate to the individual characters of the book. We intentionally created open characters. In the second book of the series, the mother of one of the Berlin girls is pictured together with another woman. While for some kids it is obviously the grandmother, for others it is clear that it’s the mother’s girlfriend. That’s the beauty of the two Nelly und die Berlinchen books – children have a lot of room to use their imagination and creatively identify with the characters.

Beese introduces her books and their context in German on her website hawandel.de

Why do you think there are so few Black protagonists in German picture books? Is there opposition from publishing houses?

To be honest, I really cannot say. You could reach that conclusion when you look at the books out there. On the other hand, established publishers choose on average one out of every 200 book propositions and I have no idea how many authors create books with Black protagonists. There is definitely not enough of such books and it is very important that more authors create them and customers explicitly request them. In the last few years, I have received requests from authors asking if I could also publish other books with very diverse characters. That was not originally my plan but I certainly can see myself doing it. But it should be books like Nelly und die Berlinchen - creative stories which reflect diversity in the everyday lives of children and not books that ‘explain’ that we are indeed all equal. I believe a lot of new books are being created at the moment and I would be happy to work with the authors.

How would you describe the current situation of racism and discrimination in Berlin/Germany?

Racism and discrimination are big problems in Germany and also in many other countries. There are of course local and regional differences but the underlying difference is really whether racism is more direct or indirect. Black people and People of Colour are considerably affected, as a result. Many families I know, for instance, carefully consider their holiday destinations because they want to feel comfortable and safe where they travel without being constantly stared at. There are of course also positive trends in politics and increasing numbers of individuals and companies that are actively engaging with diversity and intersectionality. At the same time, the discussion continues to overwhelm a lot of people and therefore the gap between an engaged discussion and its rejection is becoming wider.

What is needed, in your opinion, to advance the debate here? What role can children’s books play?

We need to become more actively engaged in showing and reflecting what real diversity in Germany and Europe could look like on the ground, in everyday situations – in television, in the news, in cinema and also in children’s picture books. We unfortunately continue to see the same stereotypes being reproduced. One of my daughters once asked me whether women or dark-skinned people could also be police officers. I immediately went in search of picture books with Black or female police officers, which in Germany, is almost non-existent.

Kids love books and books influence at a very young age how kids perceive the world. This is why diverse characters aren’t only important in empowering Black kids or Children of Colour but also white kids. When I identify with a brave, sporty girl in a book and her mother wears a head scarf, the next time I see such a girl at the playground, I would also want to get to know her instead of being sceptical. It is also important that diverse characters are not always presented as perfect or always doing the right thing. Diversity is not ‘good or bad’ but simply normal.

'Saving Teddy', the first book in the series, was published in 2016

And finally, what is your favourite children's book?

Der kleine Angsthase - The little scared rabbit (Angsthase also means scaredy-cat). I’ve loved this book since I was a child! It is comforting to see how the little rabbit overcomes his fear and even protects his small friend from the fox. It is nonetheless a pity that he first has to be a ‘hero’ before he is accepted by the other rabbits. What’s funny is that our youngest daughter identifies with the fox and doesn’t like it when he is chased out at the end. It is great when a picture book presents different characters you can identify with or where children can put themselves in the shoes of others.

Homemade Love by bell hooks

Decolonising the Imagination

This picture book was published in 2002 and is intended for ages 2 to 6 years. hooks' first children's book was titled 'Happy to be Nappy' and was released in 1999. In 2008, hooks published Grump Groan Growl, a book that embraces the myriad feelings children experience and a warm acceptance of rage and anger.

‘Any Black child that has a healthy self-esteem will know how to deal with racism…any White child that is taught to be loving is not going to be a racist’ (hooks)

'the media has bomdbarded us with stories telling the public that little black children (and we are talking here primarily about girl children) prefer white dolls to black dolls, and think that white children are cleaner and nicer. The white-dominated media presents this knowledge to us as if it is solely some defect of black life that creates such aberrant and self-negating behavior, not white supremacy' (Sisters of the Yam, bell hooks)

bell hooks emphasises the role of imagination in resisting domination. I have the impression that nowadays a vast majority of picture books are unimaginative. They do transport you into wonderful imaginary worlds but many of them leave you wanting and yearning....for blonde hair and blue eyes; they leave you with a dislike for things that are brown and black, they leave you with a void and a confusion and with a vocabulary that doesn't necessarily fit your world. My brown-skinned 3-year-old picks up a light pink coloured pencil and says convincingly that it's the colour of skin. My five-year-old always colours the girls' hair blonde because it's more beautiful, she tells me and my little one protests or cries when I try to colour a face brown or black. 

White Supremacist Capitalist Patriarchy – big words that have become hollow from use and misuse. But not with bell hooks. Homemade love is about empowerment and resistance…but without the floodlights, loudspeakers and fanfare of 'diversity'. It is about resistance through love, healing, bonding…and all of this packaged and illustrated in a playful, flighty, poetic, kinetic style that opens up the book and invites the reader to partake in, seek out and sow this seed of love.

Reading the picture book Homemade Love with my kids is a simple act of joy and sharing. My little girl laughs with the girlpie protagonist hanging from her daddy’s legs and my older one happily reads aloud with me, ‘there is no all the time right. But all the time any hurt can be healed’. Homemade Love is a little big book with deceptively simple sentences that lets children know that they deserve and have a right to be loved. Making mistakes is part of life, hurt can always be healed, peace can be made again with the world… and the tender support of parents in guiding and loving us through all of this is crucial.

Girlpies have the space and cosiness at night-time to process all the things they experienced during the day. In this space of safety, love and alone-time, the little girlpie knows her place in the world, isn’t afraid of the dark place ‘cause everywhere is home’. 

My 5-year-old asks me at the end of our reading, ‘is it true that everywhere is home?’. Oh yes, I say. This comforting well-being that you carry within you…this little ‘Lichtergarten’ (our lit-up inner garden’) as Soheyla Sadr puts it in her picture book ‘Anne und Pfirsich’ is all the ‘home’ we need for self-actualisation, …to imagine and realise our world and to be at one with it.

Shaking Binarisms out

‘We live in a nation that is incredibly diverse but our language is incredibly binary…so we have to work to be inclusive’, notes bell hooks in an interview with Connie Doebele. And this is what bell hooks’ picture books do – they twist the language out of this binarism, let the words jump up and out at you. The words are ventilated, become almost free for each and every child and parent to dwell on, caress or interact with. 

The starting point of Homemade Love isn’t diversity or any of the other catchwords that we parents latch on to in the hope that our children can experience the diverse world that we live in. bell hooks is wary about children's books that start off with a negative - 'my hair is unruly and difficult to manage but I love it just the same'...'I am told by my classmates that I can't be Peter Pan because I'm not a boy and I'm Black but I'll show them'..and the list of examples go on and on. Too many of our children's picture books are stuck in this binarism; telling Black kids and kids of colour that the world is a harsh place for them, that they are not seen as equals, something is 'wrong' with their hair, their colour, their smell, their origin, their religion...but 'WE' will be your friend DESPITE this. We may have been decolonised but the minds and imaginations are still reeling from the stupor of colonisation.

‘How do we use our imagination in the service of our well-being?’, hooks urges us to ask ourselves. When the girlpie protagonist of Homemade Love lies in bed at night, knowing she is loved, knowing the arms that held her are still holding her, she is equipped to be at one in and with the world.

bell hooks has often joked – ‘I’m not happy, I’m an intellectual, how am I going to write books for children?’ But she recognised the energy inside her and wanted to manifest it because kids and more importantly, Black kids and kids of every colour desperately need to see this seed inside them, sow it and enjoy its fruits. Only then can our children begin to see their worth and potential and react to the many hurdles that they face daily.

And finally, I'd like to quote this lengthy passage from hooks' self-help book 'Sisters of the Yam', It shows the depth of the short statements we read in Homemade Love and the deeper meanings behind some of them. In this quote, she talks about embracing darkness and instilling a love for and comfort in it, especially among kids:

In a space before time and words, the world was covered in a thick blanket of darkness. It was a warm and loving covering. Since it was hard for the spirits who inhabited this space to see one another they learned to live by and through touch. So if you were running around lost you knew you were found when arms reached out in that loving darkness to hold you. And those arms that held the spirits in that beautiful dark space before time are holding us still. This is a little origin story I made up. I thought of it one day when I was trying to explain to a little brown girl where the babies lived before they were born—so I told her they lived in this world of loving darkness. I made up this story because I wanted this little brown girl to grow up dreaming the dark and its powerful blackness as a magic space she need never fear or dread. I made it up because I thought one day this little brown girl will hear all sorts of bad things about the darkness, about the powerful blackness, and I wanted to give her another way to look at it. (bell hooks, Sisters of the Yam, pg 92)

My little adorable pink princess. Subverting the princess template in the Grace picture book series

White English writer Mary Hoffman came up with the Grace Series in the early 1990s. Here in Germany, only the first book Amazing Grace has been published (Alibaba Ffm, 1999). Grace loves stories and acting and wants the role of Peter Pan in the school play. Only problem is, she is a girl and she is Black. Her nana and mother encourage her to give it a try and her determination leads her to question established roles along gender and race constructs.

I recently checked out some other titles in the series like Princess Grace, a good book to begin reading with the little princess fans who adore wearing pink or purple and cannot tire of their favourite Grimm and Andersson fairytales, popularised and commercialised by Disney.

Take a look at Mary Hoffman's article published in The Guardian which shows her disgust for pink passivity in picture books and the harm it continues to inflict on girls all over the world:

'Down with princesses, I say! And fairies. And unicorns, rainbows, ponies and mermaids. And pink. And possibly purple, too, especially in conjunction with pink and definitely if there is any silver glitter involved. I'm sick of it all. Young girls growing up today are offered an almost exclusive diet of synthetic, comercially exploitative pap'.

This was one reason she decided to create the picture book Princess Grace, featuring the Black protagonist Grace who discovers princesses in different hues that actually do things rather than just look pretty and wait for a prince to come along. Other titles in the series like Encore, Grace, a junior reader chapter book, further open up and question the conventional princess stories by having Grace and her classmates reinterpret the roles of their favourite fairytales, like Sleeping Beauty. Perhaps Hoffman's main reason for publishing the Grace Series was to offer her dark-haired, princess-loving daughter (whose father is half-Indian) another version of what a princess can look like and be.

Self-hate among children of colour; obsession with blue-eyed blondness as the epitome of beauty; rejection of anything brown or black as ugly; lack of self-esteem; being the victim of racist remarks and discrimination...these are real problems that start at preschool and get dragged into adult life in post-colonial societies where white supremacy propaganda is alive and kicking.

In an interview with Booktrust, Hoffman calls for more books on diversity and talks about her own personal interests in representing diversity: 'More than ever, children need books that are exciting, surprising and stimulating. They need 'mirror' books and 'window' books: stories that reflect themselves but also all sorts of lives they have never imagined'.

It should be noted that these books start with the premise that being Black is somehow a barrier to overcome. The series then introduces positive figures in history (a Black star ballerina, Nigerian and Chinese princesses) to look up to or emulate thereby empowering child readers. Blackness is thematised and it could be argued that in the title books Grace and Family and Boundless Grace, Africa is exoticised. The author made her first visit to AFRICA..the Gambia is apparently too small to make the point - to meet the people who inspired the illustrations of Grace and her family. She admits that she couldn't have written the book without this journey: 'It was my first trip to Africa which was mind-blowing in itself. And I met the models for Grace, Ma and Nana for the first time. I swam in the Atlantic Ocean with them, danced with a witch doctor and stroked a huge crocodile. I couldn't have written the book without going there'.

For readers interested in Black protagonists whose colour isn't at the centre of the text, see the picture books by Toni Morrison, bell hooks or Ezra Keats.