World Book Day

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Happy world book day! Sadly, I'm far too old to receive world book tokens, but I still remember dressing up when I was at primary school, I went as Red Riding Hood. I've just seen some rather depressing news that a lad in Manchester was sent home from school for his 50 Shades of Gray costume. He's only 11, so I have no idea what his mum was thinking.

If you are small enough to receive tokens I've got a couple of suggestions of where to spend them:-

racial diversity in children's books

I was catching up on listening to Radio 4's Women's Hour today, and heard the shocking statistic that out of the 3,200 children's books that were published in the US last year, only 93 were about Black people. British publications are also lacking diversity.

If you want to listen to the programme, follow this link, the programme was first broadcast 11th April 2014.

The absence of diversity is really saddening, I think it is vitally important that the entire spectrum of people are represented in pop culture and the media. For the development of children's self-esteem, and for their enjoyment, it is crucial that they can relate to the characters they read about, or see on telly.  

Roald Dahl T-shirts

TruffleShuffle have got some awesome Roald Dahl T-shirts for adults and children. They're going on my wishlist and would be perfect as gifts for fans of Dahl's delightfully funny and wicked children's books.

The BFG was my favourite Dahl book

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 but I think my favourite T-shirt design is for Matilda. I really like Quintin Blake's illustrations   

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