posted on 30 Jul 2017

Children’s Non-fiction – comparisons from across the pond

Next time you are in Waterstones take a few minutes to look at the children's non-fiction section of the bookshelves. You'll certainly find a range of books about the natural world - flora and fauna in particular - and a growing number featuring science and technology. I also spotted a bit of Roman and Egyptian history - very distant events are seemingly much more popular than anything in our recent past. What I really struggled to find was anything much about our fairly recent social history - nothing explaining significant recent events, nothing on struggles for social justice and nothing profiling the change-makers of our times. I did see a couple of (American) publications on women's equality but nothing on the struggles for equality of black or disabled people and nothing which would have helped working class children understand their heritage.

Now I'm not saying that no such books exist because I suspect that maybe they do. What I am saying however is that the Waterstones children's non-fiction sections all seem to be remarkably similar in the stocking of often very beautifully produced but essentially uncontentious subject titles. With the exception of one or two books dealing with women’s equality, there was nothing I spotted that even hinted at an explicitly political subject matter.

I raise this topic now because having recently made a trip to the USA, I was able to look at what's in the non-fiction section in their equivalent chain store, Barnes & Noble. The comparison is really quite interesting because there are some significant differences which I think must say something about either the output of American children's non-fiction authors, the retail policy of the shops, the decisions made by US publishers or some combination of all three.

What you'll find in most Barnes & Noble branches is a mix of very similar topics to those found in Waterstones but, and it's a big but, with the addition of a host of excellent picture books dealing with a whole range of current and past social history - most notably the fight for social justice of all kinds and the celebration of outstanding individuals who have contributed to the struggle. This also quite frequently involves cultural and artistic icons whose life stories are captured and illustrated for the younger reader. We found beautifully illustrated books about civil rights pioneers like Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks and Sojouner Truth as well as a biographical account of the famous dissident judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg. We were also delighted to find a picture book that explained the life and achievements of the writer E.B. White, author of Charlotte’s Web and Stuart Little and a delightfully illustrated book about the author Ezra Jack Keats.

Stocking books like this is presumably not an ideological decision by the book buyers at Barnes and Noble and you have to conclude these are on the shelves because they sell and there’s a public demand for them. It’s surely not hard to imagine that similar books with subject matter perhaps more relevant to British children would have appeal to younger readers and even their parents. To be fair, we have recently reviewed British author Helen Hancocks’ recently released Ella, Queen of Jazz which very much echoes the template set by the American counterparts. Perhaps things are beginning to move – albeit slowly.

So here’s a message for all publishers and booksellers – it’s time to rethink what your non-fiction lists look like. Our social history needs to be reflected and available on the bookshelves in these different non-fiction formats. Children’s novelists have done a great job in bringing a whole range of crucial issues into young readers lives – fiction for children leads the way in raising difficult real-life interpretations. Non-fiction output seems to limp along somewhere in the distance, making little contribution to explaining our social and political history to children. This surely has to change.

 

Terry Potter

July 2017