Children's author Malorie Blackman

Malorie Blackman, the United Kingdom’s first black children’s laureate (2013-2015), recently found herself the focus of a racial firestorm following an interview she gave to UK Sky News. The headline of the original online article, published August 24, read “Children's Books 'Have Too Many White Faces.'” Following the article, Blackman found herself facing a “wave of racist attacks both on Sky's website [in the comments section] and directed personally at [her] on Twitter,” she shared in the Guardian. Additionally, she says the words from the Sky News headline “never passed her lips." After complaining to Sky News, the article’s headline was changed to "Call For More Ethnic Diversity In Kids' Books.” The author, who was recognized with a prestigious Order of the British Empire for her services to children’s literature, has published over 50 books, among them is the award-winning “Noughts and Crosses” series, in which the dark-skinned Crosses rule the white-skinned Noughts. The first title in the series was originally published in the U. S. by Simon & Schuster in 2005 under the original title and then later reissued as Black & White (2007). In an August 25 tweet, Blackman wrote that she was taking a temporary break from Twitter following the racist vitriol that following the Sky News article, but Blackman was soon back on the social media site the next day to acknowledge the outpouring of support from her readers and fellow writers, such as Carnegie medal-winner Patrick Ness of the "Chaos Walking" trilogy (Walker) and Chocolat author Joanne Harris (Penguin, 200).

Wow! I’m so overwhelmed and humbled by the messages of support and love I’ve received since I posted my last tweet. 1/2 — Malorie Blackman (@malorieblackman) August 26, 2014

On Twitter, Blackman shared that she has taken a short break to author an article published in the Guardian on August 27, where she told her side of the story, starting from the Sky News fallout. In her piece, she used the opportunity to emphasize her earlier message: there continues to be a need for more diversity in children’s literature. "...for those children’s publishers who may feel more diversity in the books they publish is no longer needed in the 21st century, I invite them to read the comments under the Sky interview. They reinforce rather than detract from my arguments," she writes in the Guardian. "Change is a fact of life. We move forward or we stagnate. My hope is that the UK publishing industry as a whole will embrace that fact."