When Sam Hepburn was growing up her teachers said she was too brown to be an authentic fairy – you’d think those days are over but what happens on World Book Day when almost all recognisable children’s books characters are white?
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When I was at infant school in North London in the 1960s we never had a chance to dress up, so imagine my delight when a daring young teacher decided to put on a show. The girls in my class were going to do a fairy dance based on a scene from a Midsummer Night’s Dream and we would be wearing wispy tunics over bare-legs with foil stars in our hair.
I was in heaven… until the teacher suggested that I should wear pink tights with my costume to hide my brown legs. I mean, come on, fairies only come in shades of pink and white. I can still feel the burn of humiliation. But it got worse. Another teacher took a despairing look at me and said that whatever they did I was never going to “look right”. So they solved the “problem” by putting me at the back where nobody would see me. Just thinking about it now makes me want to scream with fury.
Related: Diverse voices: the 50 best culturally diverse books
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