On 27 April 2026 Professor Karen Sands O’Connor gave a fascinating presentation to Ocean University 中国海洋大学, Qingdao, China, titled “Prizing East Asia: British Children’s Publishing By and About East Asians.” She very kindly agreed to an interview with us.
Please tell us about yourself. What would you like our readers to know about you?
I’m a visiting professor with the University of Sheffield’s School of Education. I’ve taught literature classes for thirty years, mostly children’s and YA literature and the history of representation in British and American children’s books. Currently, I’m also the collections director of the Every Voice, Every Story (EVES) resource library, which is designed to help educators, librarians and caregivers understand the history of representation in Britain.
The Every Voice, Every Story Resource Library, currently being developed in Sheffield, offers a counterview of British children’s book history. Through thousands of children’s books from the 1780s onward, as well as educational materials, original illustrations and manuscripts, advertisements, children’s writing, and items from children’s popular culture, the collection focuses on historical and contemporary representations of minoritised communities: racially minoritised, but also those communities minoritised through class, gender, sexuality, religion, and ability. The collections include ‘classic’ texts, but also those which have been hidden by history, texts suggesting that positive representation of minoritised people and communities was neither absent nor, in some cases, rare. The aim of EVES is to highlight both historical racism and its continuing effects on children’s literature, and the alternative histories which have not typically been valued or recognised by standard and scholarly histories of children’s books. We offer workshops and seminars to teachers, librarians, and students of all levels to introduce these histories, and are open for scholars interested in doing research into representation in children’s books. [Source: Listening to Every Voice and Every Story: EVES Resource Library and Research Collection, Dublin City University MA in Children’s and Young Adult Literature blog, 28 Apr 2026]
People working on East Asian/Chinese children’s books often have personal connections with the language and/or culture – could you tell us about your own journey towards East Asian/Chinese children’s books?
Really, I’m just at the start of my journey. I’ve worked with doctoral students from China recently, and learned a lot from them, including about the plight of Left Behind children. I became interested in expanding EVES’ collections to include more material that demonstrated the way that British writers represented China and Chinese people—as well as the way that Chinese people and British Chinese people are starting to represent themselves in children’s literature published in the UK and US.
The structure of your presentation gave a chronological survey of interests and attitudes (positive and negative) first towards China and Chinese things and then towards Chinese people. Could you elaborate on the motivations of those involved in the creation of some of the books you mentioned? The authors, the illustrators, publishers, reviewers, booksellers, etc?
It’s impossible to know what motivated people from the past, but one can definitely see trends. In the 19th century, travel to China by ordinary Britons was uncommon, and therefore children’s books showed a real curiosity about what the country was like. The Hyde Park exhibition of Nathan Dunn’s Ten Thousand Chinese Things in the 1840s allowed British people to ‘know’ China through objects such as clothing, weaponry, religious items and artwork, but actual Chinese people remained unknown to most British people right through the beginning of the 20th century. Artists like Walter Crane, who admired Chinese and Japanese art, copied the style in some of his work, particularly his version of Aladdin. But at the turn of the century, fears about Chinese immigration and its effects on British and American workers led to the idea of ‘Yellow Peril’ and this created and cemented many stereotypes about Chinese people in popular media—including children’s books. It took the efforts of British authors travelling to China and Chinese authors in Britain (and their panda friends) to correct some of these stereotypes and bring us the wealth of quality children’s books that exist today.
I’d like to ask about international interaction in the academic field of children’s books. As a leading scholar, having received a BA travelling professorship, you are perhaps uniquely placed to comment on how international the field is?
There isn’t enough international interaction. Of course, the International Research Society for Children’s Literature (IRSCL) and the International Board on Books for Youth (IBBY) hold conferences, but European and North American scholars often have an easier time attending these conferences because they don’t tend to have the visa or financial considerations that some other countries’ citizens might face. And long-term international collaboration is difficult to fund and (in the current global political climate) often unpopular. Britain, for example, has restricted postgraduate student visas; and the British Academy programme that brought me to Britain is no longer awarding fellowships. I think we need to make more use of global connectedness, through online lecture series (the University of Wrocław has an international speakers series – the International Voices in Children’s Literature Studies series – and of course Ocean University in China also brings in international speakers, among others)—but we should also be finding ways to collaborate online. I’m currently developing an exhibition on migration, and I’m hoping to be able to include international scholar interviews to move the exhibition beyond Britain’s boundaries.
An additional concern, and one academia in Europe and North America will have to get to grips with, is that there are ways of understanding, evaluating and producing knowledge that simply aren’t acknowledged in or valued by traditional academic structures. Colonial hierarchies of knowledge and people continue to prevent us from being truly international. Sandy Littletree’s work on Indigenous Systems of Knowledge offers ways of rethinking fields such as librarianship and archive study, and Munyaradzi Mawere has written about African systems of knowledge in relation to children’s games. These are just two examples, but I think scholars in Europe and North America, particularly those from former imperial cultures, need to take time out to consider how indigenous scholars can improve our understanding of children’s literature around the world.
There has been an intense focus on developing children’s books in China in the 21st century. Almost all prizewinning books from around the world have been translated into Chinese. This makes China a unique place to study the world’s children’s books. Could you develop your last answer with specific regard to China?
Unfortunately, I think it is still quite a one-way street. I’ve had fantastic Chinese students in my classes, and known Chinese scholars in Britain as well, but I think some of the ‘mysterious unknown’ stereotypes still hang on when it comes to British people thinking about China. Speaking with Chinese students has made me interested, not just in children’s books, but in thinking about language and philosophy as well and the ways that these shape children’s books and child readers. China has, as you say, translated the world’s prize-winning children’s books, but how many Chinese children’s books (prize-winning or not) are translated into English by British and North American publishers? In Britain, this is beginning to change through the work of illustrators like Yu Rong, who is keen to increase the number of Chinese translations in the UK, and to help authors and illustrators work together across cultures (see our post no. 142). But this work requires the awareness and willingness of publishers, teachers, librarians, and booksellers to get these books into children’s hands.
Please tell us about your own childhood reading. Any favourite books? Do you associate your early reading with any particular people or places?
I was lucky enough to be brought up in a household that valued books; my brothers and sister and I all had our own bookshelves, and we made weekly trips to the library (sometimes more in summer). But there weren’t many Chinese stories for kids in 1970s America that were free from stereotypes, especially not contemporary realism. I read a lot of folktales, and this included Claire Huchet Bishop’s retelling of the Chinese folktale Ten Brothers (her version only had five brothers). Huchet Bishop’s retelling included problematic illustrations by Kurt Wiese, but the story—of brothers who had supernatural powers and used them to cheat death—stuck with me. I only recently discovered that the Chinese version of the story has a greater emphasis on cooperation and on thwarting the exploitation of labourers working on the Great Wall. This is a good example of a story that I think would have real resonance in English-speaking countries at the moment, and maybe someone will publish a new version for children!
Any weblinks/staff page/social media you would like to share?
If anyone is interested in contacting me or finding out more about EVES resource library and the work we do, my university staff page is Professor Karen Sands-O’Connor | Education | The University of Sheffield and I (occasionally) post on Bluesky, @ksandsoconnor.bsky.social.
Chinese books for young readers 