Abstract

Writing and publishing for a Black British child audience has always had a political angle, from abolition in the late 1700s to the curriculum wars that still continue today. And because the greater proportion of British readers were (and are) white, the motivations of and negotiations between author, publisher, and reader are complex. The changing use of the Black subject in British children’s literature will be shown through an examination of different types of literature—the poem (including nursery rhymes), the comic, the educational text, and literary fiction for children over time.

Bio

Karen Sands-O’Connor is Leverhulme Visiting Professor at Newcastle University and Seven Stories, the National Centre for the Children’s Book. Her research focuses on Black British children’s literature, most notably in Soon Come Home to This Island: West Indians in British Children’s Literature (Routledge, 2007) and her forthcoming Publishing for a Black British Child Audience, 1965-2015 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).