The Bookseller - News - CLPE data shows sustained 
rise of ethnic minority representation in kids’ books

The annual CLPE survey, which is funded by Arts Council England, launched in 2017 to determine the extent and quality of ethnic minority characters featured within picture books, fiction and non-fiction aimed at three to 11-year-olds published in the UK. In 2021, 5,383 eligible titles were published and of these 1,059 (20%) featured characters of colour, a 5% year-on-year rise. The survey found that 84% of characters of colour who formed part of a main cast influenced the narrative in their expression of thought, voice or action. This is a slight drop of 6% compared to the previous year, but still significantly up from the 38% figure reported in the inaugural survey. Additionally, 32% of books submitted featured a multicultural cast of characters with shared agency, fairly stable with 2020%u2019s figure (33%) and a notable increase from 10% in 2017. The report also found that 17% of the titles featured a main character who spoke about their ethnicity and whose ethnicity formed the basis of a plot point. Meanwhile, 40% of the books only featured the presence of characters of colour in the form of background characters.