Lantana Publishing is an award-winning children’s book publisher and social enterprise with a mission to publish inclusive books by authors from under-represented groups and from around the world.
Alice Curry founded Lantana when only one per cent of the children’s books published in the UK featured a character of colour as a protagonist. She wanted her biracial niece and nephews, and others like them, to be able to grow up seeing themselves in the books they read.
Each year, Lantana publishes a select list of exceptional titles promoting diversity and inclusion, social and racial justice, gender equality, pride, empathy, mindfulness and wellbeing, with beautifully illustrated stories that help happy little minds to flourish. Visit the Lantana Publishing website to find out more.
See all of the Lantana Publishing books featured on BooksForTopics below.
What first strikes you about this picture book are the beautiful and unusual illustrations – simple shapes and evocative colours that move from browns to greens, always muted and rich. They conjure a bare and barren landscape that is slowly transformed into a vibrant and plentiful rainforest.
The story is told in the first person and so as readers, we never know the name of the little girl in the story, suggesting it could be any one of us. The powerful beginning tells us that “they said I couldn’t change the world” and this hopeful story says to both the girl in the story and to the reader that maybe you might. The little girl explains that in the place she was born there is now just desert, where once there were rivers and trees. One day she finds a seed and plants the seed in the dried up river bed. Despite the protestations of those around her telling her that the seed will never grow, she continues to protect and nurture the seed until it grows into an amazing fruit tree – and so producing more seeds that can be planted.
There is a powerful picture in the story that shows the roots of the trees reaching far below the little village, deep into the old river bed. It seems to suggest the power of the natural world, its depths and wonder. The deep roots then enabled water to be transported to the trees leaves, producing steam and then clouds and so rain, once again filling the river. As the child grows up, she shows that we can never be complacent, as one of the trees is blown down in a storm. Another young child produces a seed and so continues the cycle of care for the forest so that the forest in turn, might care for those that live there.
The illustrator dedicates the book to her great grandmother, one of the indigenous people of Brazil and the story is clearly a plea for us all to think about our treatment of the planet and not to give up when the scale of the environmental challenge facing us seems so huge.
This is a story that depicts one aspect of childhood anxiety in such a gentle way – weaving a variety of themes, including shyness, family and even an introduction to Shakespeare into one tale. The story is engaging and describes a range of emotions in an accessible and intelligent way.
The story centres on Violet, a shy child riddled with self-doubt and confidence issues when she is cast as the main lead in a Shakespeare production. Her family, including her nan and uncles, try to help Violet’s self-esteem. The story has an excellent approach to explaining the physical and emotional feelings related to anxiety, but more importantly, how to overcome them. Eagleton also embraces diversity in Violet’s support network of her family.
Clara Anganuzzi enhances the story with wonderful illustrations that perfectly portray the emotions at play. The illustrations feature intricate details in places, including photographs on the wall in the background of scenes. All these details add to the rich family diversity explored in the story.
This uplifting tale about holding on to your dreams is set among the Turkana people from north-west Kenya. Etabo’s deepest wish is to become a camel racer. When his father is forced to sell the family camels to have enough money to buy water, Etabo begins to wonder if his hopes are dashed forever. Then he receives a precious gift of a toy camel that brings his dreams alive once again. Through its beautiful illustrations and charming story, this toy-themed story book opens a window into another culture while encapsulating a theme that will resonate with anyone who knows how it feels to hold onto their dreams against all odds.
All right, so I snuck my own debut picture book into this list! As a child of very mixed parentage – Irish-Portuguese-Sri Lankan-Indian – I grew up in a country (India) where there weren’t very many children like myself. And not a single book about children like me. It was okay. I grew up loving books and reading and still do. I even grew up to make a living from books! I moved to the USA a few years ago, and had the great pleasure of seeing my own grandchild, whom I spend most of my daytime hours with now. She’s even more mixed than I am: apart from all my ancestry, she’s also Belgian on her mother’s side. She’s white like her mum and I’m brown, like her dad, and we’re a family of many colours, races, faiths, cultures, nationalities. But the one thing we all have in common is that children are children. And childhood is the most wonderful, magical time of our lives. It’s the greatest adventure we have and the happiest celebration of life itself. I AM BROWN captures the variety and diversity of children everywhere, whatever their nationality, creed, culture, race, religion (or lack of it), or identity. They just happen to be brown just as all the children in the books I grew up reading (and still love reading) just happen to be white. Because children are children and deserve to be celebrated!
A wonderful picturebook about the desire for control and tidiness, and the wonders that can occur when we accept a little mess and freedom into our lives.
Ana builds a beautiful garden on the edge of her town but is determined to keep the disorderly wild out, so she builds a boundary wall to separate the two. She wants her garden to be perfect, full of only the sweetest-smelling flowers, leafiest trees and tastiest fruit and vegetables. Any seeds that are not absolutely perfect get thrown away into the wild. The plants begins to wilt and both people and animals stop bothering to visit. Until eventually, Ana sees some sunlight beaming from over her wall and decides to climb and see what is on the other side. As soon as she sees the beauty and unrestrained nature of the Wild, helped along by all her imperfect seeds, she decides that maybe it is time to start removing some bricks from her wall.
Afiya has fine black skin, big brown eyes and a white cotton dress. She wears this dress every day and washes it at night so that it’s ready for the morning. A Story About Afiya depicts the almost magical experiences that a beloved item of clothing brings to its young owner. In this beautiful picture book, the title character’s white dress becomes a canvas for the experiences that she has each day. Glorious sunflowers, delicate butterflies and fierce tigers all become imprinted onto her dress.
The words by celebrated Jamaican poet James Berry OBE are a celebration of childhood and memory. Afiya’s dress collects the natural wonders that she sees and passes each day- flowers, fish, stones. It encourages children to think about what amazing features of the natural world they would collect if they had clothing like Afiya. This could be used to inspire nature walks, sketchbook work and descriptive poetry so that the children can capture their favourite aspects of nature as Afiya’s dress does.
Anna Cunha’s artwork reflects the focus on colour and pattern within Berry’s poetic writing. The soft pastel background creates a magical almost wistful atmosphere, perfect to showcase the passing of days as shown by the images on Afiya’s dress. There is much to inspire focused art lessons in this book. Anna Cunha uses pattern beautifully, capturing pigeons in flying formation, stretches of fish-filled sea, falling Autumn leaves and piles of towering boulders. Pupils could explore using repeated shapes and colours through printmaking.
A Story About Afiya is a beautiful book about the wonder and magic of noticing and celebrating what we find around us. The gentle use of magic realism helps readers to identify what is magical and special about their own natural surroundings.
Nominated for “Favourite Books of 2020” by: Alison Leach (founder of BooksForTopics)
Alison says, “A beautiful picturebook about the wonder and magic of noticing and celebrating what we find around us. Afiya’s dress becomes a blank canvas for the experiences that she has each day. Glorious sunflowers, delicate butterflies and fierce tigers all become imprinted onto her dress The gentle use of magic realism helps readers to identify what is magical about their own natural surroundings and explores how a beloved item of clothing brings joy to its young owner.”
Lantana Publishing brings us a stunning picture book offering from the Brazilian duo Stella Elia and Weberson Santiago.
A tender storytelling moment unfolds between a grandson and his grandpa, who says that ‘every line on my skin tells the story of my life.’ Grandpa’s seafaring tales speak of amazing voyages around the globe, joyfully traversing different continents and collecting new stories as he goes. The stories, the seas and the characters encountered along the way sit somewhere between the boundary of real and magical and it never really matters to the reader either way – because stories are stories and the joy here is in the retelling.
Not in the business of colonising, Grandpa’s love of each place he visits is poured out in his lyrical ode to each continent. The only treasures he collects on his travels are the stories with which he fills his luggage as he packs up and moves on from each place. The artwork is wonderful – capturing the spirit of the adventures and the wide-eyed wonder of the young boy as he sits and listens to Grandpa.
This is a truly lovely picture book that enchants as much as it entertains – an ode to adventures real and imaginary and a gentle plea to encourage loved ones to bring to the surface life stories that long to be retold.
A captivating picture book that marries a lyrical and rhythmic story about bedtime fears with striking artwork inspired by Indian folklore.
It is bedtime for the baby animals; the dark blanket sky is filled with an enormous moon and twinkling stars. But the comforting allure of night time soon gives way to fears when the winds rise and a thunder storm begins to set in. “You’re Safe With Me,” reassures Mama Elephant, as she explains the natural processes behind each stage of the storm, from the water raining down on the plants to make them grow to the clouds colliding to create crackling thunder. Through Mama Elephant’s storytelling and simple explanations, the animals are reassured in the knowledge that the noises and movements of the storm are natural processes and eventually feel safe to sleep soundly again.
The lyrical narrative has a lullaby feel with its onomatopoeia and lilting rhythm, evoking the connection between the environment’s natural processes and the baby animals’ instinctive sleep cycle. The text weaves its way beautifully through the distinctive artwork that embodies the sensuous and exotic jungle through a filter of earthy tones and an intricate pattern design inspired by traditional Indian prints.
This is a beautiful story about feeling safe and about how gaining an understanding of the natural world can help to overcome fears, and it would make a lovely classroom library addition for EYFS and KS1.
Tomorrow is a poignant picture book offering a window into what life might be like for children living under conditions of war, portraying the all-consuming darkness that war can bring into family life. A young boy called Yazan lives in a war-torn Syrian town. Yazan senses everything changing around him as he is no longer allowed to visit the park or to enjoy playing outside in the street.
Even Yazan’s parents are changing. His mother watches the news with the volume turned up and his father fearfully makes phone calls before daring to leave the house. Fear and anxiety invade the household like a dark cloud filling each room with gloom and despair.
Yazan is bored of being stuck inside and decides to cycle to the park by himself. Venturing outside, he sees the once lively streets are now desolate and crumbling. To Yazan’s relief, his father appears in time to take him back home and the family work together to create a new way to bring some colour and joy back to the house despite the troublesome circumstances outside.
Tomorrow is an important and accomplished picture book that evokes empathy and opens avenues to start discussing real experiences for other children around the world. The use of pattern and colour is wonderfully striking, with splashes of colour amid the gloom and a joyful final page that leaves the story with hints of hope.
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