Through her Reading for Smiles programme, Brown said she had brought inclusive stories into primary schools in areas with low literacy rates.<\/p>\n
Teachers told her that children who once avoided reading now borrowed books weekly and wrote their own stories.<\/p>\n
She has opened two community libraries and has a playful scheme, where she places books in unexpected spaces, from barbershops to takeaways – and plans to expand on this work.<\/p>\n
“Black books aren’t just for black people. They’re for everybody, because the black British story shows the beauty that exists in the UK – and the range of diverse experiences – and everyone deserves to be heard,” Brown said.<\/p>\n
Her debut picture book My Rice Is Best was shortlisted for both the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize and the British Book Awards 2026. <\/p>\n
The book explores the joy of food, friendship, cultural identity and heritage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Through her Reading for Smiles programme, Brown said she had brought inclusive stories into primary schools in areas…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":189331,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[9,24,63,122,124,123],"class_list":{"0":"post-189330","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-queens","8":"tag-new-york","9":"tag-new-york-city","10":"tag-nyc","11":"tag-queens","12":"tag-queens-headlines","13":"tag-queens-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189330","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=189330"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189330\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/189331"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}