Dawn Geddes finds out about the multicultural mission of Book Love
Dawn Geddes chats to Book Love founder Samantha Williams about her mission to provide children with multicultural books.
WE all know how beneficial reading is, and how much it helps children learn and develop, but what about the children who don’t see themselves reflected in books?
Sadly, this is the case for many young readers, with a 2017 survey showing that only 1% of children’s books include a black, Asian or minority ethnic character.
Thankfully, Book Love, the multicultural travelling book carnival and shop, is tackling this injustice head on.
“I’ve always been hugely passionate about representation,” Samantha Williams, founder of Book
Love, explains.
“If you are someone who isn’t part of the dominant culture it’s always going to be in you to try and represent yourself.
“In my previous career I was a television producer and I was always trying to raise awareness, producing programmes that featured multicultural characters and communities.”
“After I left television and my children grew, representation became increasingly important to me.
“I lost my mum a couple of years before I had my first child and it was really important that my children knew they were of African Caribbean descent.
“I knew that it wasn’t going to be easy for them to see that based on what they saw in the media.
“A child’s media is very different to a grown-up’s media – children see the world through books and toys, that’s their lens.
“I knew it was going to be difficult to access books with brown, mixed race and black children in them.”
Samantha says that the lack of representation in books became increasingly obvious to her when her children started school.
“I realised that many of the books my children were bringing home, or were learning from, were very Euro centric.
“There was nothing that represented us or our household.
“I started to go into their school as a volunteer and on one of those occasions a little boy ran out of the classroom saying ‘bushy hair’.
“It just really struck me that nothing had changed since my own time at school, but instead of reprimanding, I started reading.
“I chose a book called ‘Big Hair, Don’t Care!’ and I thought, I’m going to show these children in this class that it’s OK to have an afro, or dreadlocks or a turban.”
Samantha continued to be involved with the school, organising a literary event for Black History Month, featuring books with black characters.
The success of this led to Samantha launching Book Love in 2015.
Since then, the
organisation has been curating and showcasing the best multicultural books the world of arts has to offer, taking them out to schools, nurseries, markets, public and corporate spaces as well as selling them online.
“Book Love has really grown in a way that I never could have imagined.
“There’s been a huge demand and I think that’s because what we’re doing really resonates with people.
“I believe that’s why it’s grown so much.
“I couldn’t have done it if people didn’t believe in what we’re trying to achieve.
“The Black Lives Matter movement has really catapulted Book Love to new and different heights that I had never really been prepared for.
“Before that we were really an analogue bookseller going into the community, but after what’s happened in the last six months, things have really grown.
“We’ve gone from having four thousand Instagram followers to fourteen thousand in the space of just a few months. It’s been incredible.”
Another exciting development in 2020 was the launch of Book Love’s Gofundme Page.
“Schools need money to buy multicultural books but a lot of them just don’t have the income or revenue because their budgets have been slashed.
“It just doesn’t feel right that some schools with bigger budgets or fundraising committees in wealthier areas can afford to buy new books, while others struggle.
“We need to get these books into all schools, so we decided to set up a Gofundme page to raise the funds to do just that.
“We started it in August and amazingly we’ve already raised over ten thousand pounds.
“I’ve now set up a community interest company called Book Love and Beyond to continue this work so that we can raise more money to buy multicultural books for the schools that need them.”
Samantha says that she’s thrilled by the support Book Love has received over the past four years.
“Customers come back to us time and time again and teachers contact us to let us know how much more vibrant their book corners are now that they contain more inclusive books.
“Parents also get in touch to tell us how much they’ve enjoyed looking at our Instagram page, because it features so many images of people of colour reading.”
Samantha says that Book Love has taken her to places she never expected.
One such place is being featured in this magazine.
“I’m really honoured that ‘The People’s Friend’ wanted to cover this story.
“It’s a really special and poignant moment for me.
“My grandmother was Welsh and she was a huge fan of ‘The People’s Friend’.
“I always used to see her reading it and she’d often ask me to go to the corner shop and buy it for her.
“Being featured in the publication is just a really interesting milestone for me.
“Seeing the magazine back then as a young girl – I never thought for one moment that I’d be interviewed in it one day.” ■