Ataria Sharman on the importance of representation in children in literature

A mural depicting characters of Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki's animated fantasy film Spirited Away. The film captivated author Ataria Sharman as a child. Photo / Getty Images

Author Ataria Sharman on the importance of representation for children in literature.

Representation for children in literature is everything. It's an opportunity for little humans who are still growing up and finding themselves in this big world to learn and experience through the worldviews of characters who look and think like them. Representation in literature is also something that many children still don't have today.

When you were growing up, who was your favourite book character?

I'm hard-pressed to give you an answer to that because when I was a young Māori girl growing up in the 90s. To my memory, there was limited representation in children's fiction novels of characters who weren't European, let alone indigenous or Māori. I think that's why it can be challenging for some people to understand the importance because when there was very little for me to read, there might've been plenty for someone of a different heritage. At the same time, I do remember Māori picture books, including in te reo, which were an essential start to broadening the canon of children's literature in Aotearoa.

Ataria Sharman is the author of new book Hine and the Tohunga Portal (Huia Publishers, $25). Photo / Supplied

It's interesting where we turn to find characters that seem more like us when there aren't any elsewhere. Not knowing what I was doing at the time, as a kid, I stumbled across manga, Japanese comics, in the Wellington City Library and quickly became obsessed. Ranma ½ was one of my favourites, a gender-bending (one of the characters falls into a cursed spring and changes gender when soaked by water) series by Japanese manga artist Rumiko Takahashi.

When I was a bit older, Disney brought the rights to distribute Studio Ghibli films, a Japanese animation studio. Enter my next obsession, Chihiro from the movie Spirited Away. Here was a young girl who looked more like me, with brown hair and brown eyes. She was shy and uncertain like I was, and she'd entered a spirit world that felt a lot closer to my own understandings of Māori narratives, including strong ecological underpinnings/kaitiakitanga, powerful sorceresses/kuia and a river dragon spirit/taniwha.

I watched that two-hour film every day for a whole week of the school holidays. I even tried to cut my hair like Chihiro, which resulted in an impromptu trip to the hairdresser to fix the mess I'd made. I think this obsession of mine and the depths to which this character touched me highlights the importance of representation.

Writers shape the world in many ways. Our most popular stories are often uplifted and used as inspiration for projects outside the original text; consider Harry Potter, The Chronicles of Narnia, Matilda, the BFG and Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Then contemplate the diversity of the characters in all those books. Harry Potter does have characters from different ethnicities, but the main three (Harry, Ron and Hermione), their families and close associates were generally European.

The three stars of the Harry Potter film franchise. Mainstream children's movies and literature often fail to represent diversity. Photo / Getty Images

I'm talking about mainstream books and movies here. That's because I believe mainstream matters for children's reading. A few weeks ago, I found myself pondering whether, if my parents had tried hard, they could've uncovered more books, films and pop culture for us as kids with more diversity. You know, maybe there might've been more Māori-authored children's fiction novels in an indie bookstore somewhere. Indie bookstores are the backbone of the literary scene here in Aotearoa, often taking on a diverse range of books that you'd never find in the larger chains or airport bookstores.

But the problem in that sentence is the "tried really hard". That's where mainstream matters. My parents had four kids under 10 and weren't privileged with the means or time to trawl an indie bookstore. In fact, I don't remember going into an indie bookstore growing up – ever, and I was a big bookworm. We went to the library, Whitcoulls or PaperPlus at the local mall, or maybe if we were lucky, got to pick something from those Scholastic catalogues delivered straight to us as school students.

These days, we're starting to see more diversity in children's books. For tamariki Māori, a considerable part of that is the hard work put in by Huia Publishers. They've shown real strength in the children's fiction space in Aotearoa, sweeping this year's New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults with Charlie Tangaroa and the Creature from the Sea, The Pōrangi Boy and Ngake me Whātaitai. Of course, that doesn't mean that there isn't still much to be done. We need a diverse range of Māori children's stories to be available everywhere.

My new novel, Hine and the Tohunga Portal, is about two young tamariki Māori. One day, they're walking home from school when the younger brother, Hōhepa, is kidnapped by an evil sorcerer called Kae. He's taken into an ancient realm inhabited by the atua Māori (Māori deities), kea bird tribes, patupaiarehe (fairy people), moa and giant eagles. Only his big sister Hine can save him.

Like Steph Matuku's Whetu Toa and the Magician and Whiti Hereaka's Legacy, all of these are the kinds of books I wanted to read growing up. Inspiring adventures with characters that looked like me, sounded like me, thought like me. Characters I could see myself in so I wouldn't have had to borrow from other cultures. That is the true importance of representation in children's literature.

Hine and the Tohunga Portal, by Ataria Sharman (Huia, $25), is out now.