novel The Muslims, published originally by tiny press Sweet Apple Publishing, was picked up by Hachette and Penguin US – and is now the multi-book, highly successful Planet Omar series. The 10 years of Little Rebels has also coincided with renewed conversations within the industry about diversity and inclusion in children’s literature – although of course these conversations are not new, and Letterbox Library has been specifically working in this area since 1983. More recently, Letterbox has played a key role in the CLPE’s widely-publicised ‘Reflecting Realities’ research into the under-representation of BAME people in children’s literature
There is some overlap with these
conversations, but the Little Rebels Award is not a diversity prize. Concerns about inclusion and, for instance, the work of the Reflecting Realities report, emphasise the need for diverse children’s books in which that diversity is simply reflective of the actual diversity of the UK population and world at large. And many creators and readers from marginalised communities have expressed a desire that children’s books featuring, for instance, disabled characters or characters of colour, should not always be centred on trauma, discrimination and ‘issues’. They ask instead for more ‘casual’ or ‘incidental’ inclusion. The organisers of the Little Rebels Award couldn’t agree more. But this isn’t quite the project of the Award, which does, in a sense, look for ‘issue books.’ Along with issues such as environmental justice or economic inequality, it looks for stories which do actively address racism, ableism and other structural inequalities within the text. A Black or disabled or LGBT protagonist alone, welcome as this is, does not fit the award’s definition of a radical story. Which is certainly not to say that Little Rebels books must be bleak and traumatic. From Hey You! An Empowering Celebration of Growing Up
Black, to Agent Asha: Mission Shark Bytes, to Sofia Valdez, Future Prez to The Muslims/Planet Omar, many Little Rebels shortlistees are packed with joy and humour.
Growth
There has been an enormous increase in the number of submissions to the prize since its inception – from 66 books from 20 publishers in 2012, to 178 from 47 publishers in 2022. This is in part reflective of growing awareness of the prize, but also of a growth in books exploring social justice issues. We hope that the Little Rebels Award may have played a small role in facilitating this growth, by demonstrating that such books are valued and can reach wide audiences.
But the growth is also, inevitably, reflective of the multiplicity of urgent social justice issues that have arisen after 10 years of disturbing rightward political trends and growing inequalities. From uninterrupted Tory rule, Trump and Brexit; from highly visible incidents of police violence against black people, and recent revelations of institutionalised police misogyny; assaults on trans rights, and
6 PEN&INC.
Autumn-Winter 2022
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