Publishing has failed to deliver on its promises after Black Lives Matter. True diversity requires a lasting shift
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World Book Day question: which children’s author is name-checked in Stormzy’s song Superheroes (and appears in the video for Mel Made Me Do It) and Tinie Tempah’s Written in the Stars? The answer, as a generation of readers will know, is former children’s laureate Malorie Blackman. Her groundbreaking novel, Noughts & Crosses, turns 25 this year.
Set in a dystopian Britain (Albion), in which racial hierarchies are reversed, this story of star-crossed lovers was one of the first young adult novels to tackle racism and class directly in the UK. It was written in response to the death of Stephen Lawrence; 20 years later, Endgame, the last in the series, was finished as the world witnessed the murder of George Floyd. Noughts & Crosses was voted one of the UK’s all-time favourite books, and has been adapted for the stage by the Royal Shakespeare Company and for TV by the BBC, with a cameo from Stormzy.
The rapper writes in a new anniversary introduction that reading Noughts & Crosses “was the first time that words on a page had gripped me in the same way that a film or TV series had”. This is exactly the message behind the government-backed National Year of Reading campaign, for which Blackman is an ambassador. Of course, young people now have more screens to keep them from books. Just last month research from the National Literacy Trust showed that fewer than one in 10 boys aged 14 to 16 in the UK read daily.
