Meg Rosoff sparks diversity row over books for marginalised children

The award-winning children’s writer Meg Rosoff has sparked a major row after arguing that “there are not too few books for marginalised young people” and that good literature does not have the “job of being a mirror”.

Rosoff was commenting on the Facebook post of librarian Edith Campbell, praising the children’s book Large Fears by Myles E Johnson and Kendrick Daye, a self-published children’s book which the authors funded through Kickstarter because “we wanted to see a queer black boy represented in children’s books and instead of waiting for it to come to be, we created it”.

Campbell had said that “there are so few books for queer black boys, but there are just too few books for all our marginalised young people”. Rosoff, author of How I Live Now and other bestselling titles, responded that “there are not too few books for marginalised young people. There are hundreds of them, thousands of them”, and that “you don’t have to read about a queer black boy to read a book about a marginalised child”.

“The children’s book world is getting far too literal about what ‘needs’ to be represented,” wrote Rosoff. “You don’t read Crime and Punishment to find out about Russian criminals. Or Alice in Wonderland to know about rabbits. Good literature expands your mind. It doesn’t have the ‘job’ of being a mirror.”

But responding on her blog, Campbell said that “I do need to read about a queer black boy to read about marginalised people”.

“I do need the children’s book world to be much more literal about what, about who needs to be represented,” Campbell wrote. “I need mirrors like Jeremiah Nebula [Large Fears’ hero] to remind me that I can face my fears. I need him to remind me how fearfully white the world is and if I need this book as my mirror, then my queer little black boys need books to prop themselves on it like a crutch.”

Campbell told the Guardian: “It almost hurts to know that such accomplished authors can be unaware of how white children’s publishing is, that they fail to see that people of colour are seldom publishers or editors or that there are just as seldom writers who are featured on panels or at book events.”

To a chorus of disagreement on social media, Rosoff went on to write on Facebook that “I really hate this idea that we need agendas in books. A great book has a philosophical, spiritual, intellectual agenda that speaks to many many people – not just gay black boys. I’m sorry, but write a pamphlet about it. That’s not what books are for.”

The British novelist insisted she was not saying that diversity is not necessary, instead that “books have one job and one job only, and that is to reflect the deepest thoughts of the writer”.

“All I said, and I’m happy to repeat it, is that writers and books have one agenda and one agenda only, and that’s to reflect the concerns of the writer,” wrote Rosoff. “In other words, we can’t all go out writing diverse books just because someone thinks there should be more of them. Diversity requires serious committed thinkers in the same way any other subject does. That’s all I said and all I meant. The waves of hate I’ve received on this basis are a bit puzzling, frankly.”

Johnson, the author of Large Fears, wrote on Twitter that Rosoff’s comments were “the exact reason why I created Large Fears and didn’t wait to get the green light from anyone else”.

“This is why I crowdfunded, worked overtime, and pulled together every resource I had to make this book possible because I knew many people wouldn’t see it as necessary because privileged folks do not know the very real effects of underrepresentation,” he wrote. “But let’s make this clear: Large Fears is a book about transcending fear and doubt in order to reach your dream and highest expression. It is about the power of the imagination to do good and evil. It is about the power and warmth of support from your mom. It’s about fantasy.”

He said that he “centred on a queer black child because why not? I quite literally did the same thing that most writers do, which is write what they know. Before I was a queer black man, I was a queer black child, and I wrote a book that honoured my love for fantasy, imagination, and my mom ... Representation matters because seeing yourself challenges and expands the narratives you believe are true for you.”

The issue of diversity is a key one in children’s literature today, whether it is the 14-year-old pushing UK publishers to include more characters with disabilities in their titles, or the US-based grassroots campaigners at We Need Diverse Books calling for the books industry to publish literature which “ reflects and honours the lives of all young people”.

James Dawson, author of bestselling young adult titles as well as the non-fiction guide for LGBT young people This Book is Gay, said this morning that “on this occasion, I don’t agree with Meg”.

“While there are numerous books featuring diverse characters there seems to be an issue getting them into the hands of the young people who need them – they are often hard to locate in bookshops and don’t feature on school reading lists,” said Dawson.

“Authors have no responsibility to write anything other than the book they want to write, but I believe books with diverse characters make a huge difference to both those who can see themselves mirrored in a character and, vitally, those who don’t. This said, I am not a fan of ‘call-out culture’ on social media. The best way to encourage diversity in fiction is to simply purchase more books featuring diverse characters and use social media channels to recommend said titles.”

Rosoff told the Guardian that she felt the row had flared up over a misunderstanding: “Here’s what I thought I was saying: You can’t regulate authors to “do” diversity. It has to come from their own passionately held agenda. Books don’t have jobs, any more than symphonies or paintings have jobs. It seems a simple point to me but I believe I ended up in cross-purposes with the original poster, who wasn’t talking about an agenda for authors as much as an agenda for society. Which no sane person would argue with.”

Campbell added that she was glad the controversy had brought attention to Large Fears. “Like many Native American and people of colour, Myles has chosen to self- publish his book so that he can get it into the hands of young people,” she said. “I can’t tell you how happy I am that his book is selling. This all started by trying to attract people to Large Fears, and we did that ... We have to grow from this because we cannot stay stuck on needing more books for gay black boys and more books written by authors of colour for another 100 years.”