Little Box of Books - Creating inclusive and diverse children’s books for all families.
Little Box of Books Founder, Lynsey Pollard, talks to us about her inspiration for starting her inclusive book company. Having launched the business in 2018, Lynsey aimed to create a more inclusive library of books that better reflected minorities and underrepresented family members. Little Box of Books has a goal to publish more stories with illustrations that children from all backgrounds could see themselves in as well as promoting a diverse array of authors.
Lynsey, could you tell us how Little Box of Books came about?
Back when my eldest son, who's now almost nine, was born, I became a single mum and was looking for books that would represent our family unit. I think I went into Waterstones in Piccadilly and said, “Do you have any books that are single parent families?” and they said; “We've got my single mum the superhero, my single mum is brilliant and those ones”.
But I didn't want those. I wanted children's books where single parent families are just going about their business. And they were like, “Oh, we don't know if we've got those books. We don't know if they exist”.
That was nearly nine years ago. From there, I was like, well, there's no index and I'm not the only person who's going to need these books, so I started cultivating and creating a bookshelf for my son which reflected our situation.
I quickly realised that in the thirty years since I had last looked at a children's book, they hadn't really moved on, although society had moved on. We see all this diversity, especially being in London, and it's not reflected in storybooks at all.
So, I created this bookshelf and just kept it at the back of my mind. Then four years ago, we launched Little Box of Books, which started as a subscription book service for families, with books showing diversity in race, culture, family setup, relationships, disabilities, and all incidental to storylines. Not fact books, just story books that showed everybody.
It's funny because I feel like people always think about these books as having an agenda and it's just supposed to show real life. It doesn't always have to be so pointed. It's just normal, basically.
I think too often if books had a black character in them, those would either be books about amazing Africa, sending kids straight to African stories – and there are some brilliant stories – but if they’re the only book your kid reads that has a black character in them and there are none about black kids in London or black kids in Manchester, if the only black people they see are in books are about Africa, that sets that narrow perception of race in their mind.
And we've fought a lot against the idea that books with black characters in them must be issue led or agenda based. The fact is, people are going about their business, living their lives and everybody deserves a story about them.
2. You’re working towards ending the gender bias and underrepresentation of minorities, why or how has this become so important to you?
I think because I am white, I didn't travel through the world the same way as a lot of my black friends or brown friends, who must talk about race daily. Most of my friends will have faced some form of racist abuse. And that's just a daily reality for people of colour in this country. But what started my interest in showcasing diverse stories was when I, for the first time in my life, hadn't been represented and knew what that felt like and what it meant for my son as well. Representation isn't just for marginalized groups. And it's not just for women; it's for everybody, because the more we understand that everybody deserves equality and equity, the more we all benefit from an equal society. And yes, it does mean that some of us with privilege need to move over.
3. What were your biggest barriers in getting the gender and minority representative books to younger audiences, and how did you change this sort of underrepresentation?
I can only work in this field because publishers are now making books that show diversity in race, culture and family setups that balance gender roles. There weren't very many when we started out so we didn't know whether we would be able to continue. And publishing is notoriously very white and middle class, so the books that get published are often centered in those experiences. When George Floyd died in 2020, the Black Lives Matter protests spread around the world and people started to really think about what was on their bookshelf and how that informed how they were perceiving black people.
During that period lots of different books were commissioned, and it has resulted in more books on the shelves showing representation. Our job is to just get those books out to the people and into big markets.
I still go to supermarkets like Sainsbury's and Tesco in Gloucestershire, where I live, and there isn’t a single book with a black character in them. So, we've still got a long way to go. But we don't make the books; we just amplify that work and make sure that everybody knows how essential it is to have a diverse bookshelf for your kids and for yourself.
“What started my interest in showcasing diverse stories was when I, for the first time in my life, hadn’t been represented”
4. How do you get these diverse books in the places that you want to see them? How do you get them into schools? How do you get them into the libraries? How do you get them into Sainsburys?
Well, it's a lot of relationship building behind the scenes. We started off with a subscription box and getting them into the homes. I've got a background in PR; I was Head of Communications at Samaritans. I'm a rubbish designer, I know you're not really supposed to say those kinds of things, but I really am and I'm not a very organized person, so setting up my own business was hard. There were a lot of gaps in my knowledge and understanding, but what stood me in good stead is that I can leverage celebrities and I know how to get on the news, and I can talk on the news.
We work through marketing agencies to get the books into schools and when schools have budgets, we make sure that they really think about the diversity on their shelves. We also go through corporate partners. We had a partnership with KPMG, Avanti West Coast and various others who pay for membership of our book organization and then sponsor school libraries. There isn't very much money in budgets for schools so if we want this generation of children to fall in love with reading, we must use private money to make it happen. Because I don't think the government is going to prioritize this.
5. We had a couple of questions about your recent corporate partnerships. We were wondering how they came about? What's the impact that you've seen from having these partnerships?
We've got two at the minute. It's hard finding those corporate partnerships, looking at old links and networks and approaching places that might be interested. We sell future thinking: our plan is to go into local communities and support local primary schools. Because if you can put books on the shelves, kids are more likely to have academic success, and that's what we tell big companies.
We say, “If you can use some of your corporate social responsibility budget to really think about what the workforce future is going to look like, then we can make sure that there will be people for you to employ in years to come.”
We also use the power of celebrity - Rochelle Humes is a big supporter of ours. Giovanna Fletcher, Ferne Cotton and Dawn Porter also supported us; we've had quite a lot of celebrity support and in today's environment, that has been very valuable. And we're seeing huge differences on the ground. I got an email from a teacher a couple of weeks ago saying, “never underestimate the difference you've made in our children’s lives by giving them books where they see themselves in the pages.”
6. What's been the most inspiring or rewarding aspect of setting this up?
I mean, it's incredible from start to finish. I set it up from my kitchen table four years ago while I was pregnant with my son, who's now three, and was able to get six interns through a government Kickstart scheme that came about through the pandemic. It was an internship to take on people who were on Universal Credit. Being able to take on six people, mentor them to a certain level and then give them work experience, that's been incredible. Being able to pay wages for people who wouldn’t usually have jobs in publishing; and of course, the most incredible thing of all is to bring books to the kids who’ve never had them. We had donor subscriptions running for a long time where people could buy books for kids who've never ever had a book at home.
We've just done a partnership with a private donor where we've delivered 1,200 books to families who can't afford them, all over London. And we managed to get a box of books to every single school on the island of Jersey. We also did a project where we delivered 100 inclusive books to every single primary school on the island. So, there have just been some huge things which have been incredible and beyond what I could have imagined. And to know that kids get the chance to fall in love with reading and realize that they can be the hero of a book is an incredible honour.
7. We want to know a little bit more about your project Change of Story. I think that was a Kickstart project, could you tell us a bit more about that and what it's all about?
Change of Story came about because I was doing everything in the house on my own when the pandemic hit, so we pre-ordered books, just in case, and we took a lot of orders and then I made a Google ad which said, ‘if you're homeschooling your kids, you can get books here’. And at that point it went wild, we had order after order, and I had to do it all at home on my own. I was home schooling my eldest and looking after my youngest and didn't have any hours of break. I'd work overnight and deliver books to everybody that wanted them.
When George Floyd died, I think every inclusive book shop that existed at the time suddenly got a lot of attention. We were pinged around the Internet like crazy and there was a there was a very big sense that this is a moment where a man has died because of his skin color. It was suddenly, for the first time, for some, about experiencing what that looks like. It was an insight into racism that some people had never imagined. People have been saying so for years, but until it had been recorded it was hard to believe. You couldn't deny what happened to George Floyd, and I think at that point there was such a moment where there was an opportunity to do good and to change the landscape of what we'd seen. Bearing in mind, because I'm a white woman, more than anything you must know your space, your place and make sure that you stand aside for other people. Rochelle Humes, was keen to do something during that time. I think while everybody was in shock and knowing that change had to happen, it was the perfect time and we launched into that space.
In primary schools, there's no statutory requirement to have a library even in a private primary school. The government will say that every kid needs to love to read, but there is absolutely no requirement for those libraries to be diverse, and so we decided to set the bar. We decided we'd raise £50,000 to get 10,000 books into primary schools, and we smashed our total. Rochelle offered her a profile to help us do it. And we just got passed around by a lot of different celebrities, which really works well for our brand.
We raised the money and delivered books to schools all over the country. We deliberately chose schools where there had been either high instances of hate crime, places where the politics are incredibly divisive or places where you find an all-black primary school near to a white primary school and where racial divides are obvious. We tried to find those places where we could inject some diversity.
8. How do you choose where these books go and where they make the most impact as well?
The thing is, and this is what we've come to realize in the last few months, that books have the most impact when there's a teacher who champions them and recognizes the need for what we do, so we're moving much more into an education space.
Teachers can have all kinds of different life experiences. You might have a teacher who's never met a gay family or gay parents before, trying to teach kids about inclusion but not even knowing where to start and whispering the word ‘gay’, not really being sure about what they can say and what they can't say.
We're much more about meeting people where they are and bringing them on a journey so that we have a standardized understanding of what makes a cohesive and equal society.
9. Is there any system behind introducing the teachers to the topic and mentoring them around how they could promote these books for the children in a more inclusive way?
There are various voluntary organizations or new organizations that have come up, which are starting to do consultancy in that area. Inclusion Labs does a training for schools, which helps them have these conversations about inclusivity, but there's nothing formal in place, and it's something that I've been keen to explore – how we could standardize it so that even if you do send 100 books to a school, they are well received, well used and used in ways that help the cause.
10. So, is that something you would maybe have planned in the future that you would provide the sort of mentorship? Or do you have any other plans for your company?
Well, these next few months are all about partnership for us and collaboration, because there are a lot of disparate groups in this space and we need to bring them all together, to keep going with the change. We're seeing huge changes in the book industry, which could be argued are quite slow but at the same time there are changes, and it's about making sure that those changes reach all the kids that need to receive an education. The end goal of this is that we live in a cohesive equal society where everybody feels seen and heard and can tell a story.
11. We were curious as to whether you had three of the most important children's books that you think that every household or every classroom or library in the country should have?
I've got about 153, but I'll try to narrow it down! Race Cars is a good one, and all about privilege. It is a children's allegory about what it means to be privileged and I think adults need it as well, because it just really simplifies it. It's the thing that causes people so much angst. Like, how can you say a poor white man who is unemployed has no white privilege and say skin color gives you a privilege that you won't have in this situation. You might be underprivileged in lots of different areas, but you do have white privilege, which is a very specific thing that completely dictates how you see the world.
Boy Everywhere is an incredible book for 11 to 12-year-olds. It details a kid living his normal life in Syria when a bomb goes off, and him and his family make the journey to the UK. And the most amazing thing about it is how it details the juxtaposition between life in Syria versus life in the UK. It talks about the journey they take and all the things that we've heard about in the news – but humanizing it and fleshing it out and making it a real thing. Because if you humanize people, then the fact that they come over in boats, and this ridiculous idea that we're going to send everybody to Rwanda, becomes less likely.
The Accidental Diary of B.U.G – It's about a girl who has two mums, and it’s a very gentle representation in the book. It's hilarious, it's really well written and it's just funny.
The other book I've just thought about is called What Happened to You, by James Catchpole. It is a brilliant one, because it's about a kid with a limb difference. Everybody always asks him ‘What happened to you?’. And all he wants to do is play pirates, but in every situation that you find him, he is asked ‘What happened to you?’ instead of kids playing just with him. It’s interesting to take on the old idea that if you see someone in a wheelchair, you ask them what the matter is -- It's much more about seeing the humanity first and not thinking everybody owes you their medical history.
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