I have a bug bear with diverse books being used as a topic criteria, in the same way as books on nature or books about sport. Don’t get me wrong, anything that encourages people to seek out and read diverse authors is wonderful. But I fear this type of approach risks sidelining diverse books: only for Black history month or South Asian month…

Films, theatre, ballet, and other art forms are given a universal, family-friendly label… but not books. Whilst adults are comfortable discussing how much they loved Moana or Zootropolis we rarely apply the same cultural rules to literature. Books for children and teenagers are given age ranges and upper age limits, we are conditioned to think that once…

I didn’t read comics growing up, bar the odd Calvin and Hobbes strip. It definitely wasn’t something that was encouraged at school and I had the impression that comics weren’t really considered as books, not proper reading. And depressingly that is a notion that still persists today.

Three amazing books from Black authors for readers age 9+