Bookshelf Audit

Look through your books and think about who is represented in the stories you read.

Before you start

You will need books for this activity, at least one per participant but ideally more. If there are none in the space you meet, ask everyone to bring 2 fiction books ahead of time and bring some yourself too. Alternatively you could do a trip to your local library and potentially run the session there.
You will also need a flipchart (or some A3 paper) and pens.

What to do

Sit the young people in a circle and ask why they like the books they have brought (or chosen from the space). If someone says something like what is written below, elaborate on that and guide them towards the other ideas.
If not, ask why it is important to read stories and guide participants towards the ideas below.

Stories are an important part of how we find out about the world and think about new ideas.
When we meet people like us in a story it gives us confidence that we aren’t the only one who feels or acts like we do, and can inspire us about what we could be and do.
When we meet people who are different to ourselves it allows us a window into another world, finding out about other people and building empathy and understanding about their experience of the world.

Ask if anyone knows what the word audit means. Guide them towards this: an ‘audit’ is a formal inspection, normally of financial accounts for a business.
Then explain that you are going to do a ‘bookshelf audit’ of the books you have with you.  It is a chance for you to look at all the stories you have been reading or having read to you. Then to see what the overall picture is, rather than getting sucked into the excitement of one story at a time.

Bookshelf audit

So, time to have a look at the books on your shelves, and see if they have characters like you in them, and if they have characters who aren’t at all like you too.

On a flipchart draw a table with the book names and following categories (shortened to save space). Ask young people to look at their books in pairs and rate them out of 10 for diversity on each category in the table.

1. How many of the main characters are male and how many female? Are any non-binary?
2. Are the characters all of the same ethnicity? Or do you have books about characters from different backgrounds?
3. Are all of your books set in one country or one continent – maybe the one where you live – or do you have stories about other parts of the world?
4. Are there deaf or disabled characters in your books? If so do they get to be the main characters in their stories?
5. Where there is a family in the story does it look like your family? Are there LGBTQ characters? What about one parent families? How about children who have been adopted or fostered? And ‘blended’ families with step or half siblings.
6. Are there other categories you want to explore? Have a think about all the different kinds of people there are and make a list – see how many of those you find on your bookshelves.

Discussion questions

Bring everyone back into a circle and discuss the following questions:

1. Are the characters in your books representative of the people who you know?
2. Did you find people like you, your family and your friends in your books?
3. How does it feel to find someone like you represented in a book? How does it feel not to find that?
4. Are your books representative of the world we live in?
5. Are there any groups that aren’t represented at all in the books on your shelves?

Do something about your findings

Are there particular groups that you didn’t find in your stories? Then what are you going to do about it? Gather ideas and if people are struggling guide them towards the following:
You could do some research to find books that do tell those stories. See if you can borrow some from a library or get the books to add to your collection.
How about talking to your school about doing a bookshelf audit of the school library. Ask that they commit to buying some more books to fill the gaps they may have.
You could write to some publishers to explain it has been hard to find stories with main characters who reflect the world we live in, and ask them to prioritise publishing books that ensure they have true diversity across everything they publish.
You could write your own story about some of the people who you didn’t find in the books you have.

If there is time you could do one of these as an activity, or do it at the next session.