We need diverse books has one of the best summer reading campaigns around. Every day they’ll offer you and the children and young people you know a new perspective on a favourite story to expand your world. The campaign links to sources of all sorts of great books from African via LGBTQIA to diversity in young adult books.
There’s a serious need – in the US, more than a third of the population are people of colour, and only 10% of books are. That statistic isn’t quite as low as the 3% of literature in translation, but it’s stuck that way for two decades and it’s not good enough.
What about books in English on the other side of the pond?
Letterbox Press have a great range of books from everywhere on everything from parents in prison to gender identity.
Pushkin Children’s Books offer extremely elegant classics in translation such as Erich Kästner’s German Dot and Anton; try In their Shoes, fairy tales of footwear from around the world, illustrated by Lucie Arnoux.
But Mantra Lingua is the world’s largest publisher of dual language books with English. That means that, for example, a Polish child landing bewildered in a UK primary school can enjoy a bilingual version of Aliens love Underpants or Deepak’s Diwali.
With resources like that, they won’t stay wordless and friendless for long.
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