Reading and story time is a big part of childhood and something we do a lot of in my house. Alice is definitely a bookworm. I have to admit I haven’t really grasped quite the impression these books will be making on the girls even at such a young age. Today we have a lovely guest post for you from Helen who is talking all about her worries that the books she is sharing with her son all seem to missing one thing. Someone who looks like him.

I was mad about books when I was young and could often be found reading secretly by torchlight way past my bedtime.

So I am chuffed my three-year-old son seems to love reading as much as I did.

From the purple-prickled Gruffalo to Shirley Hughes’ Alfie and shark spotter Timothy Pope, we have enjoyed all kinds of stories together.

But I’ve noticed a theme in the piles of picture books we have brought back from the library and the dog-eared ones on his bookshelf.

Take away the stories where the lead characters are friendly monsters, brave fish and dogs that cook their own dinner and none – not one – of the human heroes look like him.

My son is mixed race – his Dad is Zimbabwean and I am white English. And among his generation he is in a fast-growing group. According to the Office of National Statistics nearly one in 16 children under five is mixed race.

And yet searching through modern children’s books, as I do on a regular basis, it seems not much has changed since I was being read to by my Mum.

In short, the heroes or tellers of the stories are still white.

Yes, the children of non-white skin tones are there. But in the background – as faces in crowds or making up the numbers in a classroom scene. It’s as though they were included by the illustrator as an afterthought. ‘Hmmm, we’re gonna need some brown faces in there somewhere…..’

But my son, like all children is not 2D. He has his own unique likes and dislikes, fears and dreams. When he grows up he wants to have a pet hammerhead shark and to fly to Saturn in a rocket.

Does all this matter? You may ask. Can’t he enjoy a story regardless of the main character’s appearance? And the answer is yes, he can and he does. In the same way I love a good Jack Reacher novel, even though I am not a six-foot tough ex military cop.

But, at his tender and impressionable age, stories can be important tools for teaching children about the world.

Until about a year ago I was not fully aware of the impact on him of seeing other children that look like him.

We were in the library in the town where we used to live in Kent, a place where the population was predominantly white. In walked a boy that looked very much like my son. He stopped listening to the story I was reading to him, shouted ‘Mummy, that boy looks like meeee!’ and started jumping up and down with a huge grin on his face. It really touched me. He has a similar reaction if he sees a mixed race boy on television.

One week at his pre-school the theme was fairy stories. After a week of learning about Goldilocks and co. he came home and told me he wanted blue eyes.

In a newspaper interview, Lauren Child, author of the hugely popular children’s books Charlie and Lola, explained why she made one of the heroes of her book, Elmore Green and his family black. She said:

“For children it is fundamental that they should feel part of society, and part of everything they are should be represented, so they can see their faces in the books and feel that the story is for them.”

My son is only three – and he is still finding his identity. Mr Men and talking animals will eventually be replaced by books with real people in them. Like most Mums I want him to feel as though he can be or do anything he wants. Of course that’s up to his Dad and I to tell him (which we will).

However I think we are kidding ourselves if we underestimate the impact of seeing somebody like him be the hero of a story. Rather than always hanging around in the back making up the numbers.

We’ll keep on enjoying good stories, whether the heroes have two legs or four. But how nice if on our journey of discovery we came across a story we loved about a boy that looked like him.

Image by Little Beanies Photography.