An outdoor community library featuring black and mixed-raced characters is celebrating its first anniversary.
Founded by Crystal Norbert, ‘See Me on the Page’ enables residents to borrow children’s books that are representative of the local community. The library is installed outside of Our Place Community Centre on Alpine Grove.
Crystal explained: “It’s very rare to have main characters that are people of colour (POC), let alone main characters that are black”. She hopes to “encourage people, not just to read, but to think outside the box when it comes to thinking about the black community”.
Cost-of-Living Crisis
In the current climate, some families don’t have the luxury of buying books, Crystal says. One of her main aims is to make books more accessible for everyone. Claire Ferrigi, development manager of Our Place, says the project is about building children’s confidence, “everyone should be able to read books, enjoy them, and see a positive role model”.
Working with Young People
Crystal has also conducted sessions at schools to perform activities such as immersive story-times and workshops. In one such workshop, children aged 7 to 11, were asked to describe a princess. Everyone in the group responded the same way – she’s got blonde hair and blue eyes. One child said: “The princess is beautiful, but she doesn’t look like me, sometimes I would like to see a princess that looks like me”. When asked ‘how would you feel if the character in the story looked like you?’, the children replied that they would feel ‘beautiful’, ‘loved’ and ‘like someone special’.
Between 2017 and 2019, only 7% of children’s books published in the UK featured POC characters, according to the Centre for Literacy in Primary Education. Crystal made a conscious decision not to organise anything for the Black History Month, asserting “it shouldn’t be highlighted over this particular month but should happen all year round.”
How can you help?
Crystal is calling for more volunteers and book donations. She wants to get the word out there that ‘See Me on the Page’ is available and free for Hackney residents.
Find out more on Instagram: @seemeonthepage and X (formerly Twitter): @SeeMeOnThePage1
