I recently came across this wonderful quote said by Serena Patel, author of “Anisha The Accidental Detective”

“Imagine loving stories, inhaling book after book, imagine books being such an important part of your life. Now imagine never seeing yourself in books, never seeing someone who looks like you or feels like you. Imagine never seeing someone like you as the hero of the story. Imagine never believing you can be a hero in your own story… I was never the hero of the story. If I couldn’t see anyone who looked like me in stories, what did that make me? Invisible? Not to say there weren’t books about people of colour but those that did exist were not made accessible to us, not given the same visibility.”

It made me reflect on my own childhood and how, as a child, I could quite easily imagine myself in the stories I read. I grew up on a diet of Enid Blyton and would have fitted right in to the Secret Seven! But imagine, never reading about anyone like you, never seeing someone who looks like you or who feels like you and never being able to imagine yourself as the hero of a story.  I wonder how that would have made me feel about reading.  I wonder how that would have made me feel about life!

As teachers, we have such influence and the ability to really change a child’s pathway in life.  We already know the power that reading can have on future life chances and it’s our mission to encourage children to read and love reading.  But, how can children be encouraged to love reading if they cannot see themselves and their lives, their world, represented in the books around them.  It’s joyful that you can walk into any book shop and see a range of diverse texts, but I wonder if these are making their way into schools fast enough. 

Having a wide selection of diverse text in schools isn’t just about reducing prejudice, but it is about building understanding.  Learning about, appreciating and understanding the lives of others, their culture, traditions, and ways of being, is so essential in our beautifully diverse country.  Ensuring schools have a wide variety of diverse texts isn’t just about familiarity, it’s also about opportunities for learning about what we don’t know about or understand yet.  You have possibly heard about “mirrors and windows” – it’s what I believe that all school libraries should aim for, mirrors to reflect children’s own identities and windows to understand the experiences of others.

So, when you get a spare minute (rare I know!),  why not take a moment to look at the book corner in your classroom, the book shelf in your corridor or the school library with “mirrors and windows” in your mind.