National Year of Reading - Inclusive Books for Children

For the National Year of Reading, we are sharing a series of short conversations with people who are involved in promoting reading with young people. This could be a programme, resources or a literary event, and we're giving them the opportunity to share what they do and how people can get involved.

In this episode we are joined by Sarah Satha the Chair of Inclusive Books for Children.

Inclusive Books for Children is a charity whose vision is  for every child in the UK to grow up reading inclusive books. They want to nurture the next generation of open-minded and inspired young readers and have created a free website to make it easy for parents, caregivers, librarians and teachers to find and buy diverse titles, confident they have made excellent choices. Updated each month, all the books on their website are rigorously appraised by experts in children’s literature with backgrounds in education, libraries, academia and publishing.

Each year, they donate 1000s of high-quality, engaging inclusive books to nurseries, schools and libraries with the greatest need via our IBC Book Box gifting scheme.

They also run the IBC Book Awards which celebrate outstanding new inclusive children’s books and their talented creators. Their Children’s Choice Awards shadowing scheme runs in tandem with the main IBC Awards. The scheme gives children the opportunity to engage in the awards process as mini-judges, reading the shortlist and voting on their favourites. 

Transcript

Ali 0:11

Hi, I'm Ali.

Katy 0:12

And I'm Katie and welcome to Mostly Book Talk.

Ali 0:15

This episode is one of a series we're doing about book-related charities and what they're doing in the national year of reading.

Katy 0:21

In this episode, we are pleased to welcome Sarah Satha, who is the chair of Inclusive Books for Children. Welcome. We're really pleased to have with us today Sarah Satha, who is the co-founder of Inclusive Books for Children or the IBC. So welcome Sarah. Tell us a bit about what Inclusive Books for Children does.

Sarah 0:46

Sure. Thank you so much for asking me to participate. IBC is obviously a charity, and I founded it with my husband four years ago because, from a parent perspective, we were really struggling to find books that we felt comfortable sharing with our own eldest child as she reached that age of sharing books and introducing reading together. We are an interracial couple, and our kid is our eldest has brown skin, and we really didn't feel that there was anything that would show her that she belonged in the world of stories. So we started this project and it really snowballed and has become what it is today. And our flagship project, the main USP of IBC, is our website, which is effectively a searchable database of all the best inclusive children's books for ages one to nine ever published in the UK. And they're all double reviewed by experts, librarians, teachers, writers, people in publishing, and always with an eye to both the quality of the text and the illustrations and the quality of the inclusivity and representation. And the mission is to just make it really easy for everybody to find the perfect inclusive book for any particular child or any particular occasion. So you can either search for a specific book or use our curated book lists.

Katy 2:14

Nice. And how far back do you go now? Because it's quite a job building that type of database, isn't it?

Sarah 2:20

Uh yeah. So we started the charity started in 2022, but I started collecting inclusive books for my child before that. And I got a little bit carried away. And I would scrape the internet and follow niche blogs. And actually, in the end, when I came to cataloguing it, because I thought this was a lot of work and maybe I should share it on the internet freely, it was already 300 books. And then we met other like-minded people and started becoming more aware of who else was in this space, and more people joined the team, and it it just grew and grew. And now we've got well over a thousand, probably close to one and a half thousand brilliant inclusive books on the site. Nice.

Katy 3:04

And at the moment, what age groups does it cover? Because you started quite young, didn't you? And it's got older.

Sarah 3:10

Yeah. So we've it's one to nine, but we haven't actually mentioned this to anyone yet. But we're looking at adding middle grade, but maybe not in the same exhaustive way because it's a much bigger space and it's yeah, it takes it's much more resource intensive to review. So I think we're gonna do a little kind of cream of the crop offering. Okay.

Katy 3:31

Just the best of the best. Yeah. Yeah, it just takes that bit longer to read the books, doesn't it? Because to do the reviews. That's a challenge that we face regularly. This is books published in the UK. Do you have a pull-in international books?

Sarah 3:43

Yeah, the website is not so strictly defined. So if a reviewer or one of the people involved in procurement wants to bring in a book or a publisher sends us a book that's not published in the UK but is only published abroad, if we think it fits and we love it, we'll include it anyway.

Katy 4:01

Yeah, because you can get hold of pretty much anything now.

Sarah 4:03

Exactly. It can be broader than that. What you find on the website can be broader. But other aspects of our work, such as our annual IBC Awards or our excluded voices report, which goes into own voice main character representation and kind of does an analysis of how many main characters, what marginalized group do they belong to, and who was writing that story. Those kinds of projects that we work on are much stricter in in terms of what books we're looking at, and it really will only be UK. Yeah. Yeah.

Katy 4:38

Okay. And so tell us about the report. How often do you do it and what does it have in it? What can people find out from it?

Sarah 4:46

We have done the report twice, and we're in the middle of preparing the third one. And so the report looks at UK published books for ages one to nine. We divide it into the same categories as our awards, which is baby and toddler books, picture books, and illustrated children's fiction for ages kind of six to nine. And it does a kind of detailed analysis by marginalized group, and we're only looking at main characters. So we'll have different ethnic groupings and disabled and neurodivergent main characters. And not only do we offer a very detailed breakdown and various angles on that, comparing it to actual demographics of the intended readership, but also we'll look at whether those books were written or illustrated from an own voice perspective. So that means that the author or illustrator, or maybe both, were sharing a story from a perspective of lived experience featuring a character that shares the same marginalized aspect of their identity. So for example, a black author writing about a black main character.

Katy 5:58

Okay. And when's the the next iteration of that coming out, the next version edition of that coming out? That will be in October. Okay. And then who's that aimed at? That's aimed at a general audience, but also presumably at publishers?

Sarah 6:12

Yeah, I think who wouldn't be interested to read it? But publishers are probably the number one target audience for that, but also lots of teachers, librarians, and authors and illustrators also sign up for that, yeah.

Katy 6:28

And it it gives the overall figures. Does it actually identify the books?

Sarah 6:32

Is there like a sort of a list that you've identified through that or so every year we'll publish in the report a list of uh picks from that particular year. Right. And in some categories, the own voice representation is so thin that it will be all of them and it will hardly take any. And I'm speaking particularly about baby and toddler books. Um, there'll be very few baby and toddler books with a main character of colour or who is disabled or neurodivergent, and even vanishingly few who will then have an author who shares in that identity. And then also we have an accompanying list on our website, which is bigger. It'll be, it'll go back. So it'll just be recommended own voice titles across the years.

Katy 7:20

Okay, excellent. So your last edition of that is obviously available now. The new one will be available in October. Yeah. Interesting. And so, what about your awards?

Ali 7:31

Yes. Tell us about the awards.

Sarah 7:32

I'd love to. The awards is a real highlight in our calendar, especially because we all work remotely around England or and the UK and the world. So it's an amazing occasion that we can come together in real life and celebrate the work and these books. And so the awards have been running for as long as IBC has, and they celebrate the best inclusive children's books published each year. And it follows those same categories that I mentioned. So we have baby and toddler, picture books, and highly illustrated children's fiction up to age nine. And it's just a really joyous occasion and shining a light on these fabulous books and hopefully promoting them to people far and wide as really strong recommendations of these books are excellent and every child should read them. Excellent.

Ali 8:29

It was such a joyous thing, and it really joyous to be there at the awards and also to hear everyone reading for everyone else.

Sarah 8:37

Yeah. It's a very friendly community feel. Yeah, really. It is. It's it's such uh a wonderful one. And yeah, this the winners are always amazing, and I'm always like, oh, that's just the perfect winner of to everyone. So in our highly illustrated children's fiction category, Shantae Timothy won with supernova. So that is that's a perfect win. She's author, illustrator, it's like her entire concept, and it's absolutely brilliant. And they she also won our new, which I'll talk about more hopefully later, the Children's Choice Awards. And she she it's just such a fun book that kids just can't resist.

Katy 9:12

So that's perfect. Yeah, we love it. We've we have a book club guide for it at the book clubs and schools hat on.

Ali 9:18

And it's yeah, we had 200 children in a hall with her.

Sarah 9:23

Yeah, she's very charismatic.

Ali 9:24

Very much fun.

Sarah 9:25

Yeah, yeah. And then the picture book was The Beautiful Layers of Me. And I will just boast that when this book landed on my mat, I was like, this is the winner. I knew it. It's just so gorgeous. I couldn't love it more. And then the winner in the baby and toddler category was Let's Play, which is a very interesting one because it's inclusive, not just from the perspective of the characters, but also because it's a real sensory experience aimed at different children to enjoy. So it's really special too.

Katy 9:57

Yeah, I know, really lovely set of books. So, how can people get involved? Obviously, they can come and find your website and use your resources. Are there other ways and are there things that you're doing in the National Year of Reading that they can get involved in?

Sarah 10:12

Yes, we are going all in on our shadowing scheme for our awards. We ran a small pilot last year, it went really well, and everyone who was involved was very complimentary about it. Now we're really emphasizing this and rolling it out. So, in terms of the timeline, that would kick off in autumn. Right. And the idea is that children get to be the judges. So we internally will come up with the short list through our traditional judges and they'll whittle it down to five books in each of the age categories. Yeah. So baby and toddler picture books, highly illustrated children's fiction. And then when the shortlist is announced in January, so straight after the beginning of term, participants would have five weeks to read and vote on the five books in their age category. And the winners would be announced just a couple of weeks after that at the ceremony, and they get to pick the school of their choice to receive £250 of inclusive books. But the best thing is really the participation for the children. I think it's just a really exciting way to read this super high-quality selection of books and then enjoy discussing and debating and really interactive with actually voting and seeing the fruits of that come to life very soon after.

Katy 11:39

Presumably, children will get involved through parents and through schools, or how do people get involved in that process?

Sarah 11:44

Yeah, it's very open, but we find that it lends itself really well to schools and also libraries and nurseries. We would encourage to participate as well with the baby and toddler books. But also, if anybody wants to participate from home or maybe they're doing homeschooling, it would be perfect as well. So it's very easy for anyone to register, and you can pre-order the book to computers if you're a school or a library, or you can make sure to order them the moment that the shortlist is announced in early January. Yeah. And we've tried to make it as simple and user-friendly as possible. It's just a very simple Google form that you fill in. So no muscle. And also lots of fun resources with suggestions for whoever's running the group or running this at home to do activities around the books and ideas for conversations and resources for easy things to print out for, like voting forms, and obviously a really cool sticker that says I am an IBC Children's Choice Award judge, that kind of thing. Nice.

Katy 12:48

And I love the idea of how do the babies and toddlers give the feedback? Um this is intriguing me. And I think

Ali 12:55

I think the most chewed.

Sarah 12:59

I feel like also when we say baby and toddler, we are one plus. Okay. So there may be some ability to communicate and verbalise for um in the category of one to three year olds. And yeah, admittedly, maybe the ones that are towards the older end of that age group will find it more easy to express a natural opinion. Maybe it's also in part going to be up to the person running the group to sense the mood and communicate it.

Katy 13:29

Yeah. No, I just love I really like the idea of giving a bunch of babies and toddlers books and going, seeing what they do with them. Yeah. Yeah. It'll be good. But you know the ones that that they sit with and turn the pages backwards and forwards and backwards and forwards, and as Ali says, give them a chew or... brilliant. Is there anything else that you're doing in the National Year of Reading? We don't we don't we we have no kind of pressure on anyone to be doing anything special because we know everything will still be here after the National Year of Reading.

Sarah 14:00

We will still be here after the National Reading for sure. But I think another initiative that people might be interested to know about is our IBC book box scheme, which is a book gifting scheme for state schools. And we're going to bump it up this year to a hundred boxes of a hundred books, a hundred inclusive children's books, and it's absolutely our ultimate top 100 inclusive children's books of all time. The most beautiful collection, and we'll have a hundred of those up for grabs. And honestly, any state school that can submit a compelling non-AI application is a shoe-in. It's really worth applying. So I hope that anybody who's eligible will consider applying for that, or anybody who whose kid goes to a school that could do with some new books, or anyone at all will encourage them to apply.

Ali 14:54

So that could that could be a librarian or a member of a school community who thinks their school would be, yeah. And is it just a written application? Is it online?

Sarah 15:03

Yeah, again, it's just a Google form. We can try to make it as light touch as possible. We just need a quite short but sincere explanation of why people would like to have these books and what they would do with them. That's all we need.

Katy 15:19

Yeah.

Ali 15:20

Perfect.

Katy 15:21

Is there anything else you want to tell us about?

Sarah 15:24

I'm just wondering whether to also mention that there is our serious book gifting scheme, but we are holding one of those boxes back for just a special social media competition, which really will just be a kind of popularity contest, and whichever school gets the most votes on our leaderboard will get one of those boxes.

Katy 15:47

So that's an alternative route to getting the box. Okay, so marshal all your social media warriors in your school to vote for you.

Ali 15:55

Yeah, that's fun. Okay, sounds good. And as you say, it's a fun way to amplify the awards and just get people thinking about it.

Sarah 16:02

That's it.

Katy 16:02

Yeah, great. Yeah, sounds good. So finally, what are your hopes for the National Year of Reading? What do you hope it will achieve?

Sarah 16:09

Oh, I just want every child to discover the contentment of settling down to a wonderful book and the joy of being swept off on an adventure from just a wonderful story in this magical object in your hands. And also I just want them to have these benefits of this exposure to something that is just so healthy for your brain development and state of mind.

Katy 16:37

Yeah, brilliant. Thank you. Thank you so much.