DARWINISM FOR BEGINNERS: Picture books that introduce children to evolution

This post was originally published on Picture Book Den, a blog about picture books by picture book authors and illustrators.

Until recently, the UK school curriculum did not require children to be taught about evolution until they reached secondary school. In September 2014, after years of lobbying by scientists and other groups, evolution was introduced into the final year (age 10-11) of the primary curriculum. While this is a step in the right direction, research has shown that children are more likely to accept evolution’s rational explanation of creation if they’re introduced to it towards the beginning of their primary education rather than at the end, by which time less-rational explanations (both religious and non-religious) may have taken root.

For the last few years I've been using my poem My Cousin is a Cucumber (from Skyboy and other Stupendous Science Stories) to explain to Year 3 and 4 classes that all life on Earth is believed to have a single common ancestor. Most seven-year-olds are fascinated to learn that they are descended from an "itsy-bitsy blob of life" and amused to discover that they are the distant cousins of both cockatoos and cucumbers. An awareness of evolution is fundamental to a child’s proper understanding of the natural world and, if presented in an appropriate and engaging way, there is no good reason for evolution not to be introduced to children as young as five or six.

Picture books can be a very effective way to introduce evolution to children from an early age. How the Borks Became, my new picture book with Elys Dolan, was written specifically to explain natural selection, the process by which evolution takes place. It was developed in consultation with Boston University’s Child Cognition Lab who have been researching how to teach evolution effectively to young children. As a result of their research, the team developed their own natural selection picture book, How the Piloses Evolved Skinny Noses, which is aimed at a slightly older age group to How the Borks Became and explains the process in a more detailed way. You can find out more about the team’s research and their book at evolvingmindsproject.org.

How the Borks Became follows the evolution of a fictional species, the llama-like Borks, who live on “a far distant planet, quite like our own Earth”. The books shows how three environmental factors - climate, predation and availability of food – result in Borks evolving from smooth-furred, short-necked, blue creatures into shaggy, long-necked, yellow ones.

How the Borks Became shows how natural selection transforms the Borks from smooth-furred, short-necked, blue creatures into shaggy, long-necked, yellow ones.

The use of a fantasy alien ecosystem gives the book licence to represent the process of natural selection in a speeded-up, caricatured form over just four generations of Borks. A page at the end of the book explains that evolution on Earth happens at a far slower rate with much smaller changes and that it might take an Earth animal millions of years to change as much as the Borks in the story.

When a greedy predator gobbles up all of the blue-furred borks, only the better-camouflaged yellow-furred Borks are left to parent the next generation.

Here are five more picture books that do a great job of introducing the fundamentally important topic of evolution to children at primary school age.

Our Family Tree: An Evolution Story 

written by Lisa Westberg Peters

illustrated by Lauren Stringer

Suitable for age 5 and above.

This is a US picture book, but can easily be bought on import. Westberg Peter’s simple, poetic text charts the evolution of humans from our beginnings as simple single-cell organisms to the present day, highlighting significant stages along the way. Stringer’s illustrations intercut pictures of creatures in their natural habitats with images of a family mapping out an evolutionary diagram on a sandy beach. These sand drawings are cleverly employed to illustrate important developments in internal anatomy, such as the appearance of backbones and lungs. A glossary page and timeline at the back of the book give additional details and a sense of perspective to the book’s four billion year narrative.

A spread from Our Family Tree, showing the development of fins and a backbone.

The Story of Life

written by Catherine Barr and Steve Williams

illustrated by Amy Husband

Suitable for age 6 and above.

This book covers an even longer timeline than Our Family Tree and charts the evolution of all life on Earth with the time period displayed in the corner of each page. Amy Husband’s lively illustrations display the diversity of Earth’s plant and animal life at various stages in its early history, before narrowing the focus to show the last 12 million years of human evolution from the the first apes to modern man on the last four spreads. The book finishes with an environmental message about the need to look after the planet that is our only home.

This spread from The Story of Life illustrates the diversity of life on prehistoric Earth.

What Mr Darwin Saw

by Mick Manning and Brita Granström

Suitable for age 7 and above.

Although the concept of evolution predated Charles Darwin, it was not widely accepted until Darwin discovered the principle of natural selection. Mick Manning and Brita Granström’s biographical picture book spans the life of this revolutionary scientist, but focusses chiefly on the five years the young Darwin spent as a captain’s companion and naturalist aboard the HMS Beagle. The book uses scenes from the voyage and excerpts from Darwin’s diary to show how his encounters with the plants and animals of South America, and the Galapagos Islands in particular, informed his subsequent work.

What Mr Darwin Saw illustrates how Darwin’s experiences during the voyage of the HMS Beagle informed his later work.

The Misadventures of Charles Darwin

written by Isabel Thomas

illustrated by Pete Williamson

Suitable for age 9 and above.

This book, part of Oxford University Press’s Treetops in Fact series, presents an entertaining biography of Darwin’s life, from “stinky schoolboy” to aged “celebrity scientist”. It also does a great job of explaining Darwin’s theories clearly and succinctly and examines some of their implications for science and culture. Isabel Thomas’s engaging  and accessible text is liberally peppered with archive photographs and Pete Williamson’s illustrations and ‘Mythbuster’ panels throughout the book help to correct common misconceptions about Darwin’s life and work.

This spread from The Misadventures of Charles Darwin looks at how Darwin’s theories were initially received.

All About Evolution: From Darwin to DNA

by Robert Winston

(Previously published as Evolution Revolution)

Suitable for age 10 and above.

This book, written by scientist and broadcaster Robert Winston is crammed with detailed information on every aspect on evolution, from its historical development as an idea, to its possible implications for the future of mankind. One minor criticism is that some spreads feel a little too crowded, making it difficult to take in the content, but this is easily forgiven given the breadth and quality of information the book contains. Although this book is probably more suited to secondary school readers, it contents will be of interest to more advanced and inquisitive readers in their final years of primary school as well.

This spread from All About Evolution shows how scientists think complex structures like the human eye evolved via a series of incremental changes.

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How the Borks Became An Adventure in Evolution

illustrated by Elys Dolan is published by Otter-Barry Books.

Find out more about this book on my website

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HOW THE BORKS BECAME • Book launch and readings at Wollaton Hall Natural History Museum

The book launch was followed by three public readings of the book. (Hall photo: Gerry Molumby)

I had my first ever book launch last Saturday, for How the Borks Became, my new picture book with Elys Dolan.

The book is an entertaining introduction to the principle of evolution through natural selection so, rather than ask a bookshop to host the launch,  I approached my local Natural History Museum at Wollaton Hall in Nottingham to ask if they'd be interested in hosting it – and to my delight they agreed!

We were blessed with a beautiful sunny day, which made the Hall look all the more magnificent!

We could not have wished for a grander venue or better weather! (Photo: Val Sawyer)

The launch was held in one of the museum's galleries, decorated with giant dinosaur illustrations by ZHAO Chuang.

(Photo; Kurtis Brade)

The day started with a short reception, attended by local authors, illustrators and other guests from the East Midlands' book community.  I'd hoped to photograph more of the guests, but the only photo I managed to take is this gathering of Nottinghamshire's wonderful children's librarians.

Nottinghamhire's children's librarians: Carolyn Gallagher from Inspire (Notts County Libraries), Val Sawyer and Rachel Marshall from Notts Education Library Service and Sandra Edis from Nottingham City Libraries

Fortunately, I did have the presence of mind to photograph these brilliant Bork biscuits before they were picked of by hungry predators. The biscuits were made by local cake and biscuit maker Amy Lawson. You can see more of Amy's mouthwatering work on her instagram page.

A batch of Bork biscuits!

The reception was immediately followed by the first of three public readings by me and Elys.  We got the children to spot the changes between an early Bork and the later, more-evolved version that Elys drew for them and asked them to suggest how these changes might have helped the Borks to survive.

Elys drawing a Bork. (Photo: Erika Meza)

Then we read the book to them …

"The thing about Borks is, no two are a match …"

… and did some book signing and doodling. I've only just realised that I didn't think to ask Elys to sign and doodle in my copy – you can tell I am new to this book launch thing!

Elys and me signing Borks books. (Photo: Janetta Otter-Barry)

But at least I have this great photo of me and Elys with the Borks, taken by Elys's agent Frances.

This photo implies that Elys and I are at opposite ends of the evolutionary spectrum!
(Photo: Frances McKay)

As our publisher Janetta was leaving, she spotted this young reader sitting on the Hall steps engrossed in her new book.

 Lost on Planet Charleebob (Photo: Janetta Otter-Barry)

Thanks to everyone who came along to the launch reception and readings. And an especially big THANK YOU to museum curator Adam Smith and City Science Officer Sue Mallender for arranging for the Hall to host the launch, Site Coordinator Chelsea Rushton for doing such a great job of organising the events from the Hall's side and Graham Armitage and Aimee Bollu and for making sure everything ran smoothly on the day.

How the Borks Became is published by Otter-Barry Books

Find out more about the book on my website

HOW THE BORKS BECAME: An Adventure in Evolution • New UK picture book

How the Borks Became, an evolution-themed picture book by me and Elys Dolan is out today!

After thinking about writing a picture book about evolution for several years, I finally got around to doing it in 2013. When my children were in primary school the only explanations they had been taught for the creation of life on Earth were those given in Christian and Hindu religious texts. I’ve no objection to schools teaching children religious creation myths at this age but, if children are to develop a proper understanding of the natural world, schools ought to be teaching the evidence-based explanation of creation offered by science alongside the faith-based explanations offered by religion. Since September 2014 UK primary schools have been obliged to teach evolution to children in their final year (age 10-11). While this is a step in the right direction, research has shown that children are more likely to accept the rational, scientific explanation of creation presented by evolution if they are introduced to it towards the beginning of their primary education, rather than at the end, by which time less-rational explanations (both religious and non-religious) have often established themselves in children's minds.

A spread from How the Borks Became illustrating the evolution of humans over the last 3,500 million years.

Picture books can be very effective in illustrating the concept of evolution to young children. However, while there are plenty of picture books that show how evolution results in plants and animals changing their appearance over successive generations, there are very few picture books that explain the process by which these changes are brought about. And those picture books that do attempt an explanation are often inaccurate or misleading, suggesting that a species might change its appearance within a single lifetime or that the change might be brought about by a conscious effort by an individual animal.

It’s a common misconception that Charles Darwin discovered evolution, but the concept was established long before Darwin popularised it. Darwin’s breakthrough discovery was the process of natural selection whereby individuals best adapted to their environment are more likely to survive and pass on their advantageous features to the next generation. Having been unable to find a picture book that depicted this process accurately, I set out to write one myself.

To depict natural selection properly one has to show individuals with beneficial traits surviving, while other individuals, who lack these traits, are dying. The dispassionate depiction of creatures dying from hunger, predation or other environmental factors is the antithesis of the reassuringly safe, peril-free world that the vast majority of picture books present to young readers, so I decided that the book needed a strong dose of humour to lighten the tone. In an attempt to achieve this, I drew inspiration from Dr. Seuss, whose rhyming stories often introduced children to important concepts in an amusing and engaging way. My personal favourites include The Sneetches, a laugh-out-loud story that deftly deals with both racism and consumerism, and The Lorax, which tackles environmental issues in a similar way.

The stories of Dr. Seuss, including The Sneetches and The Lorax, were an inspiration for the book’s text.

Both the Sneetches and the Lorax are fantasy creatures and I decided that – although evolution books are usually found in the non-fiction section – the animals I would use to explain it would also be fictional. So the book is set on the Earth-like Planet Charleebob (named after Charles Robert Darwin) and follows the evolution of a species of llama-like alien creatures called Borks. One big advantage of using a fictional species and setting was that it gave me licence to represent the process of natural selection in a speeded-up, caricatured form over just four generations of Borks. A page at the end of the book explains that evolution on Earth happens at a far slower rate with much smaller changes and that it might take an Earth animal millions of years to change as much as the Borks in the story do.

Writing the text turned out to be relatively quick and easy compared with finding a publisher. One of the first publishers I showed the text to told me that she could not envisage how it could work as a picture book, so I illustrated a few of the spreads myself to get the concept across. Another publisher told me that the book needed at least one character that survived from beginning to end, so I wrote an alternative draft featuring a Doctor-Who-like time traveller with a boy and girl companion, to narrate the story from start to finish.

One of the spreads I illustrated myself, to show how the book might work on the page.

Usually, if a picture book does not find a publisher after about a year, I stop pitching it. However How the Borks Became was a project close to my heart and my supportive agent Caroline Walsh and I continued to show the text to anyone and everyone we thought might be interested for three years before the book was finally accepted by Janetta Otter-Barry for her newly-founded publishing company Otter-Barry Books. One of the last books Janetta had published in her former role as publisher at Frances Lincoln was The Story of Life, an excellent picture book illustrating the timeline of evolution of life on Earth by Catherine Barr, Steve Williams and Amy Husband, so I knew the Borks were in safe hands.

Janetta accepted the book on the condition that we found a suitable illustrator and made a couple of suggestions. Although I would have been happy to work with either of these illustrators on another project, they didn’t feel right for the Borks. I’d tried to make the text both amusing and educational and I felt the book needed an illustrator that could bring a strong element of humour to the illustrations as well. I told Janetta that ideally the book would be illustrated by someone like Elys Dolan. Although I’d previously worked with Elys on The Clockwork Dragon, I doubted she’d be interested in doing another book she'd not written herself as she had plenty of picture book ideas of her own to keep her busy. However I decided that there was no harm in asking her and Janetta agreed. To my delight Elys said that How the Borks Became sounded like an exciting project and agreed to come on board!

If you’re familiar with Elys’s other books, you’ll know that she excels at creating spreads crammed with amusing detail and she brought a similar approach to her illustrations for How the Borks Became, inventing a lively alien ecosystem for the Borks to inhabit. In addition to the five plants and animals referenced in my text and illustration notes, Elys created a further ten lifeforms that can be seen evolving (or in one case going extinct) alongside the Borks. You can find the names of all fifteen species and a little information on each in the explorer notes that fill the book’s endpapers. My favourite creature is the magnificently sinister Ravenous Snarfle, that deserves a book all to itself.

"They were roaming this plain on a bright sunny day.
when a Ravenous Snarfle came flying their way."

Shortly after Elys came on board I read a Guardian article about a team of developmental psychologists at Boston University who had been researching how picture books could be used to teach natural selection to 5-8-year-olds. Like me, the team had been unable to find a picture book that depicted natural selection accurately and, like me, the team had developed their own, called How the Piloses Evolved Skinny Noses. The Piloses picture book is aimed at a slightly older age group than How the Borks Became and illustrates the process in a more detailed, less caricatured way, but both books take a similar approach. Like the Borks book, the Piloses book follows the evolution of a fictional creature. The Boston team had opted to use a fictional species because their research had shown that children are more likely to have preconceived ideas about real animals. The team’s research had also shown that children were able to retain and generalise the understanding of natural selection that they’d learnt from their book and apply the same principle to other fictional animals.

Boston University psychologist Deborah Kelemen with her own book, How the Piloses Evolved Skinny Noses. You can find out more about the book and the research behind it at evolvingmindsproject.org

“Most storybooks that touch on natural selection only further confuse kids, but How the Borks Became introduces the principle in an effective and entertaining way.” DEBORAH KELEMEN Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Boston University, and author of How the Piloses Evolved Skinny Noses

The approach taken by the Boston team’s book seemed so similar to the one taken by How the Borks Became that I sent team leader Deborah Kelemen a copy of my text along with Elys’s initial character sketches in the hope that she might be willing to give us some feedback in the light of their research, which Deborah graciously agreed to do. Deborah and her team continued to give us feedback as we developed our book and Deborah gave the finished book the endorsement opposite.

How the Borks Became was not an easy project to get published, but it’s a book I’m especially proud of. So now it's finally in print, I’d like to give a HUGE RAVENOUS SNARFLE SIZED THANK YOU to my agent Caroline for persistently pitching it to publishers, to publisher-editor Janetta for recognising and honing its potential, to illustrator Elys for breathing weird and wonderful life into Planet Charleebob and to everyone else that helped the Borks evolve from a fanciful idea to a fabulous finished picture book!

Here's what some early reviews have said about the book

"An accessible and entertaining way to introduce the concept of evolution and natural selection, told through amusing verse … Elys Dolan's colourful illustrations are full of fun and children will enjoy spotting all the variations."
PARENTS IN TOUCH

"A funny, accessible introduction to the concept of evolution
and natural selection … Dolan's pictures are a riot."
Fiona Noble, THE BOOKSELLER

Here's a trailer I made for the book.

You can download and print out activity sheets for the book by clicking on their images below.

Spot the Difference

Wordsearch

Find out more about the book on my website

RUBY THE DUCKLING Easter competition artwork

The Ruby the Duckling books by me and Rebecca Harry are particularly popular around Easter time. I guess this has something to do with Ruby's resemblance to a yellow Easter chick.

Rebecca and I decided to mark this Easter by offering Ruby's readers the chance to win a portrait of Ruby by Rebecca in a prize competition. To enter they had to paint or draw their own Ruby portrait and send a photo of it to Rebecca or myself via Twitter or Facebook. Rebecca had provided some guidance on how to do this on a How to Draw Ruby activity sheet on the Hatchling Books web site.

Click here to download a copy of Rebecca's
How to Draw Ruby sheet.

Here are the lovely drawings and paintings we received in response:

The first Ruby to arrive was this one, by a real life Ruby, age 3.

By Elodie, age 5.

The clutch of Rubies shown below arrived together from the same class!

This first clutch of lovely pictures is from Leyla May age 3, Madison age 4, Ava age 4, Lewi age 3, Deakon age 4,
Grace age 4, Emelia age 3, Annette age 5 & Rhiannon age 5 …

… and this second cracking selection is from Brodie age 5, Bobby-Jai age 5, Isla age 5, Harry age 5, Charles age 5, Amelia age 5, Daniel age 4, Jenson age 3, Khloe age 3, Jenson age 3, Ethan age 3 and Jack age 5.

By Rhiannon, age 4.

By Mair

Our last entry was from another real life Ruby!.

When the competition was finished, Rebecca wrote all the names on strips of paper, put them into a bag and got her son, Iolo, to pick a winner at random, which was …

The winning picture by Ethan, age 3.

… this painting by Ethan Ethrington!

Congratulations to Ethan! This lovely portrait of Ruby, signed by Rebecca and myself, will be winging its way to you shortly.

Rebecca painted this picture of Ruby especially for the competition.

Find out more about the Ruby the Duckling books

at the Hatchling Books web site

THE EMIRATES FESTIVAL OF COGNITIVE DISSONANCE: How do writers and publishers square their commitment to freedom of expression with sponsorship by a brutally repressive regime?

Some of the eminent writers currently appearing at this year’s Emirates Airline Festival of Literature.
Top: Carol Ann Duffy DBE, Anthony Horowitz OBE, Eoin Colfer, Jacqueline Wilson DBE.
Bottom: Jenni Murray OBE, Lemn Sissay MBE, David Walliams OBE, Kate Adie OBE

Cognitive dissonance – the mental discomfort that results from a person performing an action that contradicts their ideals – seems to be reaching epidemic proportions at the moment. Whether it’s pro-EU politicians voting through Brexit bills or eco-conscious holidaymakers taking climate-wrecking long-haul flights, many of us seem to be behaving in ways that conflict with our deeply-held principles.

"While the festival presents itself as promoting freedom of expression and the exchange of ideas, its sponsors have gone to great lengths to ensure that this freedom does not extend beyond the festival’s glitzy bubble"

Among the potential sufferers in this epidemic are the many eminent UK writers currently appearing at the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature in Dubai. The festival's main sponsors are Emirates Airline and the Dubai Government (who are the airline’s sole owners) and the festival’s patron, Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, is both the ruler of Dubai and the Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). While the festival presents itself as promoting freedom of expression and the exchange of ideas, its sponsors have gone to great lengths to ensure that this freedom does not extend beyond the festival’s glitzy bubble and UAE residents wishing to remain at liberty must be extremely careful about which ideas they attempt to exchange. According to Amnesty International, more than a hundred peaceful critics of the Sheik’s government have been imprisoned since the festival was launched in 2009, most of whom remain in prison today.

The already dire state of freedom of expression in the UAE took a further nosedive nine days after the close of last year’s festival when Ahmed Mansoor, a courageous critic of Sheik Mohammed’s government described by Amnesty as "the last remaining Emirati human rights defender speaking out about human rights violations in the country,” was arrested during a midnight raid on his family home. Mansoor has since been held in an unknown location. Amnesty have said that they are “appalled and dismayed” by Mansoor's arrest and expressed concerns that he may be at risk of torture.

Human rights organisations explain the vital role played by UAE human rights defender
Ahmed Mansoor in this 2015 video made before his arrest.

Mansoor’s arrest was part of a further crackdown of freedom of expression in the three weeks following last year’s festival which also included the sentencing of Dr Nasser bin Ghaith to ten years in prison for the "crime" of criticising Sheik Mohammed’s government on Twitter. In a statement on Dr Nasser bin Ghaith’s sentencing, Amnesty’s Lynn Maalouf observed that “the authorities have left no room for doubt: those who dare to speak their minds freely in the UAE today risk grave punishment.”

"The authorities have left no room for doubt: those who dare to speak their minds freely in the UAE today risk grave punishment." Amnesty International

Sheik Mohammed’s sociopathic obsession with suppressing freedom of speech among his subjects does not seem to have deterred many authors from accepting invitations to the lavish festival he sponsors. This year’s programme boasts an impressive roll call of writing talent, with current UK Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy, former UK Children’s Laureate Dame Jacqueline Wilson and former Irish Children’s Laureate Eoin Colfer all making return appearances. UK journalists and broadcasters are also well represented by the Observer’s Associate Editor Robert McCrum and the BBC’s Jenni Murray OBE and Kate Adie OBE among others.

Penguin's pledge to champion freedom of expression.

I don’t know how many of the writers appearing at this year’s festival are members or supporters of organisations like English PEN, who campaign to defend writers around the world “whose human right to freedom of expression is at risk”, but this group must be among those at risk of enduring the most severe degree of cognitive dissonance. There must also be a staggeringly high risk of cognitive dissonance among the publishers listed among the festival’s secondary sponsors whose codes of conduct commit them to defending freedom of expression. These include Penguin, a “Silver Pen Partner” of English PEN, who claim to have “a long and proud history of championing free speech”.

Penguin’s website includes a corporate pledge to “champion freedom of expression” which it describes as “fundamental to our organisation” and several Penguin authors testify to how much “free speech matters” to them in the 2011 video below.


Prominent among them is Anthony Horowitz OBE, another of the big name UK authors making a return appearance at this year’s festival. Horowitz explains in the video that “freedom of speech is a fundamental human right,” and emphatically states that “censorship is sterile, it’s empty, it’s repressive!”. These fine sentiments are clearly not shared by the "loony" (Horrowitz's word for a censorious leader like Sheik Mohammed) who is footing the bill for Horrowitz's business class flights and luxury accommodation at the festival.

"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear." George Orwell

A potential hotspot of cognitive dissonance within the festival programme is the annual George Orwell Lecture, where invited luminaries give a talk inspired by the great writer. Last year's George Orwell Lecture was given by distinguished BBC broadcaster James Naughtie. This lecture series claims to celebrate the politics, philosophy and beliefs of the same George Orwell who wrote: “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” I don’t know if Sheik Mohammed is an Orwell fan, but if he is, he seems to have misinterpreted Nineteen Eighty-Four, Orwell’s nightmarish vision of an oppressive surveillance state, as a guidebook on how to govern Dubai and the wider UAE. Human Rights Watch described the Sheik's government's introduction of censorious "cybercrime" laws in 2012 as having "effectively closed off the country’s only remaining forum for free speech". The UAE authorities have been widely criticized by human rights groups for deploying expensive surveillance software to spy on human rights activists. In 2016 the Sheik's government invested an unprecedented sum in an attempt to hack the iPhone of now-imprisoned human rights campaigner Ahmed Mansoor, forcing Apple to issue a security update and earning Mansoor the soubriquet of the 'Million Dollar Dissident'. Prior to his arrest, Mansoor had been communicating with human rights groups outside the UAE using Skype, but in January this year UAE authorities blocked the use of the video-calling app (having already blocked Facetime and the call features in WhatsApp, Facebook, Viber and Snapchat). When thousands of UAE residents signed an online petition on Change.org calling for Skype to be reinstated, the authorities blocked access to Change.org as well. The UAE’s Thought Police are nothing if not thorough.

The politics of festival patron and sponsor Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum make Donald Trump's look liberal. 

A current bête noire of many western writers attending the festival is US president Donald Trump. Since Trump was elected in 2016, left-leaning writers have been falling over each other to condemn his bullying, bigoted brand of politics. I suspect few of these writers would be willing to lend their names to a Trump Industries Festival of Literature sponsored by the US leader, no matter how great the opportunity for dialogue and cultural exchange with US citizens. It’s a testament to the UAE state's adeptness at PR that so many left-wing authors, poets, journalists and broadcasters are unable or unwilling to apply the same ethical judgment to a festival sponsored by Sheik Mohammed, a politician so right wing, he makes Donald Trump look like a liberal. While Trump can at least claim to be a democratically elected leader who represents the people he governs, the Sheik is an autocratic dictator who brutally suppresses all calls for democratic reform. While Trump’s government bars critical journalists from their press conferences, the Sheik’s has them abducted, imprisoned and tortured. And while Trump is curbing the rights of LGBT citizens, the Sheik criminalises them and bans trans visitors from entering Dubai and the wider UAE.

One area where Trump is openly modelling his policies on those of Sheik Mohammed is workers’ rights. When Trump sang the praises of Dubai Airport in 2016’s presidential debates, he neglected to mention the inhumane labour practices that enabled Sheik Mohammed’s government to build such grandiose structures so quickly and for so little money. Trump has a first-hand knowledge of these practices, having exploited them himself to build the Trump International Golf Club in Dubai, and his administration’s current attack on worker’s rights is intended to bring US workers' rights closer to those of Dubai’s.

“If the UAE’s labour exploitation was white-on-black instead of Arab-on-Asian, few UK writers would be comfortable enjoying the festival’s lavish hospitality.”

Dubai’s building and services industries are dependant on the existence of an underclass of Asian migrant workers, many of whom work in conditions that have been described as “very close to slavery”. A recent Guardian article by Nick Cohen likened the relationship between the UAE’s Arab elite and its migrant underclass to apartheid. If the UAE’s labour exploitation was white-on-black instead of Arab-on-Asian, few UK writers would be comfortable enjoying the festival’s lavish hospitality. Exploitation is exploitation, no matter which race is on top, but the differing demographics of the UAE's modern day slavery does not seem to trigger the post-colonial guilt of UK writers in the way that South Africa's did.

The UAE has set itself up as the gatekeeper of literature for the Gulf region. The Dubai-based Emirates Airline Festival is the biggest literature festival in the Arab world and the annual international book fair in the neighbouring emirate of Sharjah is also the largest in the region. Both the festival and the book fair are heavily reliant on high-profile UK authors to fill out their programmes.

This reliance on UK talent presents the UK literary community with a real opportunity to promote freedom of expression and respect for human rights within the Gulf. The UK literary community has far more leverage in the UAE than it does in most countries where freedom of expression is currently under attack, such as Turkey or Egypt.

"By acting as window dressing for the UAE’s showcase literary events, respectable UK writers are helping to give the impression that their government sponsors are also respectable."

As the situation stands, instead of helping to curb censorship and other human rights abuses in the UAE, many eminent UK writers are helping to whitewash over them. By acting as window dressing for the UAE’s state-sponsored showcase literary events, respectable UK writers are helping to give the impression that their government sponsors are also respectable.

Sheik Mohammed’s gang of autocratic leaders is not the only government that would prefer the festival's writers to keep quiet about their sponsors’ poor human rights record. The UK government is currently prioritising trade over human rights in the UAE and has announced plans to double bilateral trade between the two countries to £25bn in the next two years. Arms sales are especially lucrative; despite its size, the UAE is currently the world's fourth largest buyer of arms. The participation of eminent UK writers in UAE state-sponsored events like the festival help to cement relations between the UK and the UAE. And, of course, the chief reason that UK publishers with “a long and proud history of championing free speech” are prepared to endure such high levels of cognitive dissonance at events like the Emirates Airline Festival and Sharjah Book Fair is that there is a great deal of money to be made from book sales in the region as well.

The road ahead looks rocky. As the UK leaves the European Union, Great Britain PLC will be obliged to look further afield for lucrative trading partners and that inevitably means more cosying up with repressive states like the UAE. I fear we are going to have to endure a lot more Emirates-Festival-style cognitive dissonance as a consequence.

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Further Information

	The International Campaign For Freedom in the UAE’s open letter to authors appearing at the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature 2018
	English PEN and Human Rights Watch 2016 open letter to festival patron and sponsor Sheik Mohammed
	Amnesty International 2018 report on Human Rights in the UAE
	Human Rights Watch’s 2019 report on Human Rights in the UAE
	2016 Think Twice Festival Boycott Campaign