Verna Wilkins and Tamarind Books: Making Room for Black Children in Print

The drawing that raised a question

Verna Wilkins often explained the beginning of Tamarind Books through a drawing made by one of her sons. For a school project about himself, he had coloured his skin a pale peach. When she offered a brown crayon, he resisted: he knew his own colour, but believed a person in a book had to look different. Recalling the incident in a 2016 interview, Wilkins described her concern about what the absence of Black children from picture books could teach a young reader. In 1987, she founded Tamarind to change the books available to children like him. ¹

That concern drew on her own childhood in Grenada. Wilkins remembered imported reading books filled with English landscapes, cold weather and flowers unfamiliar to her tropical surroundings. Her father, a headteacher, made another kind of reading possible. He told stories from Africa and the Caribbean that connected with the children’s own lives, while also using European stories to introduce them to places beyond the island. In her account, the problem was the narrowness of the reading offered, rather than the existence of stories from elsewhere. ²

She carried this understanding into her work with young readers. Pictures, she argued, help children enter the world of written language before they can read the words themselves. Who appears in those pictures, and what they are allowed to do, therefore matters from the earliest stages of learning. ²

Tamarind’s publishing programme included Black and Asian children and children with disabilities. As the British Library’s history of representation in children’s literature explains, Wilkins combined everyday stories with biographies of significant Black figures. The breadth was deliberate: a child might need a funny story, an adventure, a recognisable family or an account of someone whose achievements opened up a new possibility. ³

Building a publishing business at home

Wilkins’s own account for Publishing News describes a business assembled around the kitchen table with her family’s support. An early story showed a Black girl’s birthday party with a group of children from different backgrounds. When a teacher suggested that one book was insufficient, Wilkins produced more: a boy making a cake and a mother repairing a car. She then made accompanying puzzles at the teacher’s suggestion. The exchange shows how the list developed through practical contact with classrooms, with writing, illustration and learning materials considered together. ⁴

Orders followed, but access to bookshops remained difficult. Wilkins recalled retailers telling her that Black characters would have a market somewhere else. Others claimed that Black customers did not enter their shops. She turned to mail order and educational exhibitions, while supportive stockists, including Newham Bookshop and Letterbox Library, helped the business survive. Finding a reader required attention to how a book travelled from its maker to a family or school. ⁴

At the Africa Writes festival in 2014, Wilkins described handling writing, publishing, promotion and selling herself in Tamarind’s early years. Emma Shercliff’s report of the discussion records her decision to sell at the Afro Hair and Beauty Show, where she took £3,500 over three days. The example made a concrete point about audiences: customers could be reached in places beyond conventional literary events. A family attending a show might also be looking for books in which its children could recognise themselves. ⁵

The same discussion stressed that Tamarind’s books were intended for all children. Wilkins challenged the assumption that a Black protagonist restricted a book’s audience. Her commercial work and her educational purpose were closely connected. Selling the books demonstrated demand, while getting them into homes and classrooms allowed readers to encounter characters that some gatekeepers had assumed would interest only a narrow group. ⁵

Everyday adventures and a Black tooth fairy

Dave and the Tooth Fairy offers a clear example of the kind of story Wilkins wanted to publish. Dave loses a tooth after a tremendous sneeze and cannot find it. Wanting the tooth fairy’s reward, he substitutes his grandfather’s dentures. The fairy, Afiya, then faces a problem of her own when she discovers an unexpectedly expensive collection beneath the pillow. The humour comes from a child’s ingenuity and an adult misunderstanding, within a world where Black characters occupy the centre of the action. ⁶

Paul Hunt’s illustrations accompanied the original Tamarind version. A Publishers Weekly review admired the characters and the pictures’ expression of Dave’s excitement and anxiety, while questioning whether the fairy’s modern equipment and working life diminished the magic. That mixed response is useful: the book invited discussion of storytelling, visual detail and comic invention, as well as representation. Wilkins’s characters could be evaluated as characters in a children’s story, with their own wishes and mishaps. ^{6 7}

BookTrust dates the original edition to 1993 and identifies Carl Pearce as the illustrator of a later version. The distinction matters when looking back at Tamarind: familiar titles can acquire different pictures and publishers over time. BookTrust included Dave and the Tooth Fairy in its selection of a hundred favourite children’s books, explaining its choice in relation to the importance of a Black boy leading the story. ⁷

Wilkins, a former business studies lecturer, also worked closely with schools. Tamarind’s classroom publishing widened the range further. In 1999, TES reported six picture-book readers supported by the NASUWT teachers’ union for the National Year of Reading. Its £75,000 contribution covered production, the Tamarind catalogue and distribution of that catalogue to schools. The subjects included a birthday, a mother arriving late and children playing together. These were recognisable events given imaginative space, rather than lessons organised solely around racial difference. ⁸

The list involved several writers and illustrators. Gillian Lobel’s Starlight, illustrated by Nic Wickens, followed a girl and her hobby horse into a dream adventure. Malorie Blackman’s Marty Monster, illustrated by Kim Harley, turned an older brother into the focus of younger children’s imaginative exploration. Blackman praised Wilkins’s attention to production and her involvement of authors and artists throughout the process. Tamarind was creating a publishing list through collaboration, with quality of text and image central to the result. ⁸

Black British lives for younger readers

Picture books formed only part of Wilkins’s response to the gaps she encountered. In 1999, she began the Black Profiles series after failing to persuade larger educational publishers to include Black British and European figures in a biography project. In a 2001 TES interview, she explained the problem of offering British children very little beyond accounts of prominent people elsewhere. The question concerned proximity: could readers find people whose achievements belonged to the society in which they themselves were growing up? ⁹

The early series included poet Benjamin Zephaniah, novelist Malorie Blackman, entrepreneur Jim Braithwaite, barrister Patricia Scotland and surgeon Samantha Tross. Aimed at children roughly nine to twelve, the books introduced living people working across different professions. Their range expanded what could be imagined as a Black British life. Literature sat alongside medicine, law and business, giving teachers and families material that could prompt questions about education, work and ambition. Biography became another way of making room on the shelf. ⁹

The Life of Stephen Lawrence, published by Tamarind in 2001 and illustrated by Lynne Willey, required a different balance. Lawrence’s murder had made his name widely known, but Wilkins’s book sought to preserve the young person’s life. Harvey McGavin’s contemporary TES report emphasised the ordinary details: his enjoyment of sport and music, his schoolwork, his family and his wish to become an architect. The book’s title itself directed attention towards a life with interests and possibilities, cut short by racist violence. ¹⁰

Writing for younger readers did not require hiding that violence. It required giving the person enough space that the circumstances of his death did not consume everything else. McGavin’s report placed the biography alongside memories from teachers who had known Stephen. Within Tamarind’s catalogue, the book shows the seriousness of Wilkins’s commitment to Black lives: the same publishing house could offer a comic tooth-fairy story and help children understand grief, injustice and the loss of a young man’s future. ¹⁰

Tamarind joins Random House

Random House Children’s Books acquired Tamarind in 2007. Its retirement announcement for Wilkins, issued in October 2009, explained that she had remained to help establish the imprint within the larger company and recruit a successor. Wilkins described the advantages in practical terms: the annual programme had grown from three or four books to ten, supported by specialist design, production and publicity staff. Tasks previously carried by a very small operation could now draw on a much larger organisation. ¹¹

Patsy Isles became Tamarind’s commissioning editor, while Wilkins continued as a consultant into 2010. Isles brought publishing and journalism experience and a personal connection: her daughter had read Tamarind titles when young. The announcement presented the change as a transfer of responsibility for an established list. It also records why the acquisition appealed to Wilkins. More resources meant the possibility of developing books with expertise that a small independent business had struggled to provide at the same scale. ¹¹

Recognition accompanied this period of expansion. Tamarind received the Decibel Cultural Diversity Award in 2008. The Royal Society of Literature later recorded both that award and the reach of Wilkins’s books through BBC children’s programmes and National Curriculum SATs lists. These routes carried the work beyond specialist book fairs, placing it among books encountered through schools and national broadcasting. ¹²

Children become editors

Wilkins’s later work with Firetree Books continued her interest in who made the decisions. Firetree was a separate venture, developed with former Tamarind colleague Simona Sideri. In her 2016 interview with distributor Turnaround, Wilkins described school projects in which children helped shape books. For Abdi’s Day, Somali children in Harrow supplied knowledge about their seaside trips and rejected her proposed title, Hassan’s Day at the Seaside. Their choice recognised something the adult author had missed: the name and tone that felt right to them. ¹

A Visit to City Farm developed this approach with pupils at Chalkhill Primary School in the London Borough of Brent. Karen Argent’s first-hand report of the 2016 launch describes two Year 5 classes working with Wilkins and illustrator Karin Littlewood. The children considered a younger audience in reception, helped shape the text and examined illustrations during production. They wanted rhyme included, and the finished work provided material for a performance involving voices, music and sound effects. ¹³

The launch at Brent Civic Centre made their contribution visible. Their names appeared in the book, and they signed copies alongside Wilkins. That act carried a practical lesson about publishing: books were objects they could help make, with decisions they could understand and influence. Their role extended beyond appearing in a picture or supplying an idea for an adult to use. They had an audience to consider, pages to discuss and a finished publication to share. ¹³

A related collaboration followed Wilkins’s visit to Uganda with RedEarth Education. Children reviewing her draft for A Very Busy Day replaced a troublesome dog with goats and changed character names. Wilkins accepted that their knowledge of the setting exceeded hers. The process gave young readers authority over the details of the world being represented. ²

An inheritance of books and publishing knowledge

The British Library’s account places Tamarind within a longer history of Black British children’s writing, which already included authors such as Petronella Breinburg, Andrew Salkey and Beryl Gilroy. It also records a direct connection to later publishing: Anna McQuinn worked as an editor for Wilkins before establishing Alanna Books, subsequently Alanna Max. Tamarind’s influence can therefore be followed through people and editorial experience as well as individual titles. The aim of giving Black children ordinary, enjoyable lives on the page continued through new books and new businesses. ³

Wilkins’s own experience has become part of the history being preserved. In April 2025, she appeared in conversation with Joy Francis in the Women Speak Volumes series, developed by Speaking Volumes, Words of Colour and the George Padmore Institute with their partners. The series brought attention to older Black women working across the arts. For publishing history, such testimony adds something that a catalogue cannot show on its own: the choices, setbacks and relationships behind the books. Wilkins’s account of starting with family concerns and learning the trade connects the finished publications to the work that made them possible. ¹⁴

Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2021, Wilkins has also described the significance of meeting children in person. The society’s profile recalls a Black girl who wanted to write but only began to imagine that she could become an author after meeting Wilkins. The encounter extended the work of the books themselves. A child could see someone who had written stories, organised their publication and brought them into schools—and could begin to imagine doing that work too. ¹²

Sources

[1] Turnaround Publisher Services. Interview: Verna Wilkins of Firetree Books; 16 September 2016.

[2] RedEarth Education. An Interview with Verna Wilkins; 10 May 2016.

[3] British Library, Discovering Children’s Books; archived public page. Farrah Serroukh and Karen Sands-O’Connor, Go deeper: Reflecting on Black presence in children’s books; 21 February 2020; archived 11 April 2021.

[4] Publishing News, British Book Industry Awards; archived public page. Verna Wilkins, Tamarind Books: Redressing the balance; Undated account following the 2008 award; archived 17 September 2009.

[5] Africa in Words. Emma Shercliff, Books for the Masses? Publishing Genre Fiction in Africa: Africa Writes, 13 July 2014; 18 August 2014.

[6] Publishers Weekly. Dave and the Tooth Fairy: review of the Tamarind edition illustrated by Paul Hunt; Web record dated 29 September 2008.

[7] BookTrust. How we chose the 100 Best Books.

[8] TES. Elaine Williams, The story of my life: interview with Verna Wilkins; 19 March 1999.

[9] TES. Karen Gold, Out of the ghetto: The British experience section; 2 November 2001.

[10] TES. Harvey McGavin, Life and death of a south London schoolboy; 20 April 2001.

[11] Random House Children’s Books press release, published by Booktrade; archived public page. Tamarind Publisher Verna Wilkins To Retire At RHCB; 30 October 2009; archived 3 March 2016.

[12] Royal Society of Literature. Verna Wilkins: Fellow profile; Undated; records election in 2021.

[13] The LetterPress Project. Karen Argent, Young authors of the future?; 27 November 2016.

[14] George Padmore Institute. Event: Verna Wilkins in Conversation; 15 April 2025; event held 30 April 2025.

Sources checked on 23 October 2026.