The store will not work correctly in the case when cookies are disabled.
plus alert_in_circle basket basket_full chev_down chev_right chev_right_small cir_eye cir_pencil cir_puzzle c_scissors cross pencil message instagram twitter linkedin linked youtube link look paypal p_discover p_maestro p_mastercard p_paypal p_visa search secure sq_book sq_earphones sq_eye sq_message sq_pencil sq_play play sq_search star tick user user_in_circle wishlist zoom_big zoom_in zoom_out nav play_video download mail peeko
Skip to Content

Our Partners can provide personalised buying advice, the opportunity to receive free books and free delivery when shopping at an online party.

Shop with a different Partner

I prefer to shop direct with Usborne

On this website you can browse and buy Usborne books in English, French, German, Spanish, Catalan, Italian, Dutch, Korean and Brazilian Portuguese.

In the UK and certain countries in Europe, you can buy directly from Usborne or from an Independent Usborne Partner. In the USA you can buy books via links to Usborne Books & More, the website of our US distributors.

Elsewhere in the world we provide links to local online retailers who will fulfil and deliver your order. Please check the retailer’s delivery destinations to make sure they deliver where you are.

In China, you can buy Usborne books in English and in Chinese (simplified characters) via online and offline retailers.

Toggle Nav
50 years of books for curious kids
  • Books
    • Browse by Age
      • 0 - 3 years
        • Viewing 0 - 3 years
        • 0+ months
        • 3+ months
        • 6+ months
        • 12+ months
        • 18+ months
        • 2+ years
        • 0 - 3 years
      • 3 - 5 years
      • 5 - 7 years
      • 7 - 11 years
      • 11 - 13 years
      • 13 years+
      • Browse by Age
    • Browse by Category
      • Activity books
        • Viewing Activity books
        • Colouring books
        • Drawing and doodling
        • Puzzles and quizzes
        • Sticker books
          • Viewing Sticker books
          • Sticker Dolly Dressing
          • Sticker books
        • Wipe-clean books
        • Rub-down transfer books
        • Write-in activity books
        • Activity books
      • Baby books
        • Viewing Baby books
        • Christmas books for babies
        • Board books
        • Cloth and fold-out books
        • Baby novelty books
        • THAT'S NOT MY®
          • Viewing THAT'S NOT MY®
          • Christmas
          • Fantasy
          • Farm animals
          • Wild animals
          • Pets
          • Vehicles
          • THAT'S NOT MY®
        • Baby books
      • Christmas books for kids
      • Early years
        • Viewing Early years
        • Going to school
        • First skills
          • Viewing First skills
          • Learning to write
          • Numbers and first sums
          • Letters, shapes and colours
          • First skills
        • Phonics and learning to read
        • Nursery rhymes
        • Word books
        • Growing up and first experiences
        • Early years
      • Easter and Spring
      • English
        • Viewing English
        • Creative writing
        • Dictionaries
        • English
      • Fiction
        • Viewing Fiction
        • Animal stories
        • Classic stories
        • Fairy tales
        • Funny stories
        • Graphic novels
        • Story collections
        • Fiction
      • Foreign languages
      • Geography and environment
        • Viewing Geography and environment
        • Earth and the environment
        • Seas and oceans
        • Weather and climate
        • Activism
        • Geography and environment
      • Growing up and mental health
        • Viewing Growing up and mental health
        • Mental health and feelings
        • Relationships and Sex Education
        • Growing up and mental health
      • History
        • Viewing History
        • Ancient Egypt
        • Ancient Greece
        • Ancient Rome
        • Art history
        • British history
        • Famous people and explorers
        • Knights and castles
        • Prehistoric times
        • Vikings
        • World wars
        • History
      • Back to school books
      • Hobbies and interests
        • Viewing Hobbies and interests
        • Art and crafts
        • Chess
        • Cooking and food
        • Fashion
        • General knowledge
        • Music
        • Nature and outdoors
        • Religions
        • Sports
        • Hobbies and interests
      • Libros en Español
      • Lift-the-flap books
      • Maths
        • Viewing Maths
        • Maths dictionaries
        • Puzzles and activities
        • Telling the time
        • Times tables
        • Maths
      • Novelty books
        • Viewing Novelty books
        • Jigsaws
        • Books with toys
        • Magic painting and fingerprinting
        • Pop-up books
        • Sound and musical books
        • Touchy-feely books
        • Novelty books
      • Picture books
        • Viewing Picture books
        • Picture book stories
        • Non-fiction picture books
        • Picture books
      • Read with Usborne
        • Viewing Read with Usborne
        • Read with Usborne Level 1
        • Read with Usborne Level 2
        • Read with Usborne Level 3
        • Read with Usborne Level 4
        • Read with Usborne
      • Science and technology
        • Viewing Science and technology
        • Space
        • Computers and coding
        • Human body
        • Science dictionaries
        • Technology and inventions
        • Transport and vehicles
        • Science and technology
      • Dinosaurs
      • Class sets
      • Inclusive book recommendations for schools
      • Browse by Category
    • Popular Themes
      • Christmas books for kids
        Christmas books for kids
      • Earth and the environment
        Earth and the environment
      • Mental health and feelings
        Mental health and feelings
      • Jigsaws
        Jigsaws
      • Sound and musical books
        Sound and musical books
    • Popular Series
      • Sticker Dolly Dressing
        Sticker Dolly Dressing
      • THAT'S NOT MY®
        THAT'S NOT MY®
      • Billy and the Mini Monsters
        Billy and the Mini Monsters
      • Farmyard Tales Poppy and Sam
        Farmyard Tales Poppy and Sam
      • Usborne Early Years Wipe-clean
        Usborne Early Years Wipe-clean
      • Phonics Readers
        Phonics Readers
      • Key Skills
        Key Skills
      • 100 Things to Know
        100 Things to Know
    • New Books
    • Browse All Books
    • Books
  • Activities for Kids
    • Discover Activities for kids
    • Play and Learn at Home
    • Fact of the Week
    • Activity Sheets
    • Write a Story
  • Quicklinks
    • Discover Quicklinks
    • Quicklink of the Week
    • Browse Quicklinks Books
    • How to Say
    • Online Safety
    • Quicklinks Help
  • Schools
    • Fact Force
  • About Us
    • Meet the Family
    • Sustainability
    • What We Stand For
    • Careers
    • Global
    • Trade
    • Blog
  • Fact of the Week
  • Sign In / Register
  • Buying Options
  • Privacy
  • Terms & Conditions
  • Meet the Family
  • Sustainability
  • What We Stand For
  • Careers
  • Global
  • Trade
  • Blog
    • Home
    • About Us
    • Promoting Diversity

    Promoting Diversity

    Our commitment to fairness and equality

    Promoting Diversity

    What we're doing to help promote diversity

    Books open doors to new worlds, allow children to walk in someone else’s footsteps, help them learn new skills, and encourage them to explore new ideas. For this to be effective, all children – including children of every ethnicity, age and gender – must be able to see themselves in our books, as well as seeing people who are different from them, in many ways.

    Effective diversity and inclusion of all kinds is crucial. However, we particularly recognise the urgency to do all we can to counter racism against Black people and to promote equal representation of Black people in our company, our community and our books.

    We know there is a lot we need to do to achieve this, and to properly address inclusion and diversity throughout our publishing and our organisation. We commit to do this.

    In this section you can read more about: 

    • What we're doing to promote a more diverse workforce at Usborne
    • How we're working with our community to diversify children's publishing
    • Our commitment to diversity and inclusion in our books

     

    A message from Peter Usborne

    The Black Lives Matter protests are, in my opinion, the most significant of my (now long) lifetime, and have been an appropriate wake up call for our industry, including very much us at Usborne. They have strongly reiterated the injustices and inequalities faced by Black people all over the world and that we all have a responsibility to commit to change.

    Read more from Peter

    Promoting a more diverse workforce at Usborne

    We recognise that in order to create diverse books, we need more diverse staff and an inclusive environment. 

     

    Applied

    Applied is recruitment software to de-bias the recruitment process. Despite our best intentions, humans are less-than-perfect at making decisions. Studies show that the tools we have traditionally used to aid our decision-making — like CVs, unstructured interviews, and network connections — only exacerbate these embedded biases. We are aware that the publishing industry is not diverse enough, and that Black and Ethnic Minority candidates are currently particularly under-represented. As traditional recruitment methods encourage people to hire people who are ‘like them’, we have decided to use Applied for all vacancies across our business. By anonymizing applications and building transparency and analytics into every step of the process, Applied will hopefully help us to discover talent that might have otherwise been missed, and help us to build a more diverse staff, representative of our wider society.

    As well as processing all job applications through Applied, we are also advertising those vacancies to a wider and more diverse pool of candidates. We regularly share vacancies via networks including Black Young Professionals, Creative Access and Run The Check and support Positive Action in our recruitment practices to remove the lack of representation in the organisation of Black, Asian and Ethnic Minority groups.

    We are constantly assessing the impact of these actions and taking further steps all the time.

    See our current vacancies

     

    Creative Access

    We are an employer partner with Creative Access to bring in and develop talent from under-represented communities in these ways:

    • Hiring diverse candidates to work at Usborne
    • Investing in staff from under-represented groups to progress to senior positions
    • Helping create an inclusive workplace so that new and existing diverse staff feel valued and able to flourish 
    • All staff, at all levels, are receiving allyship training as part of an ongoing and developing programme of mandatory staff training. 
    • Where we lack knowledge and understanding, across all of our departments we are seeking to work with external experts and consultants.  

     

    Creative Access logo

    Working with our community to diversify children's publishing

    We recognise the need to work with our wider communities to encourage those who may not see publishing as a place for them, so they can learn about the careers and opportunities in publishing. 

     

    Access Aspiration

    Access Aspiration is funded by the Mayor’s Fund For London, to create more visibility of careers and pathways into employment for 16-18 year olds, through aspirational employer encounters and experiences.

    Young Londoners from low income backgrounds, particularly those from Black, Asian, or Minority Ethnic communities, face an extremely competitive labour market when they leave education. This is compounded when other barriers come into play. Only 17% of London’s professional jobs are occupied by people from lower income backgrounds compared to 30% nationally. The problem is not only one of access, but also of representation. Research has shown that more than a quarter of young people from low income backgrounds believe that ‘people like me’ do not succeed in life.

    Access Aspiration is designed to tackle these issues by providing careers support and guidance for young Londoners who are making key decisions about their future, but struggling to make links with employers.

    We know that people from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic communities are underrepresented in the publishing industry, as are people from low income backgrounds. We must change that. Our partnership with Access Aspiration helps us to reach young people from these groups at a key moment in their lives, where they are making decisions about further education and pathways into employment.

    Usborne staff across all of our departments are volunteering their time to deliver in-person events in schools and digital content for students to access online. We hope to demonstrate that children’s publishing is a viable career choice for people from all backgrounds, and to encourage a more diverse new generation to join the publishing industry.

    Alongside our partnership with Access Aspiration, Usborne staff are encouraged to visit schools and colleges in their communities to talk to children of all ages about our industry and what we do, from how a book is made for primary kids to careers in publishing for older students. We offer paid volunteering days to facilitate this, and the sessions for Access Aspiration.

     

    The Usborne Academy

    In 2018 we set up The Usborne Academy Week as an opportunity for eight people from groups currently under-represented in publishing, particularly those from Black, Asian and other Ethnic Minority backgrounds, to spend an all-expenses-paid week at Usborne. Having run this for two successful years, we have taken on board feedback from partners, consultants and our wider communities, and decided to reassess what we are offering. Going forward we will be running The Usborne Academy through Access Aspiration, targeting 16-18 year old Londoners through their network of state secondary schools.

    Over half of the 30+ state schools which Access Aspiration works with have Pupil Premium rates of 50–65%, and over two thirds of the students it supports are from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic backgrounds. We hope that, by working closely with Access Aspiration and its network of London secondaries, we will be able to showcase what we believe is an exciting, creative and collaborative industry, and that some of these extremely talented young people might be inspired to pursue publishing as a career in the future.

     

    Our commitment to diversity and inclusion in our books

    We commit to ensure that every child can relate to the characters in our books, as well as learning about people who are different from them. There is still a gap to close between where we are now, and where we need to be.

    We are committed to increasing the number of books we publish that both feature a diverse range of characters and are about diversity. We are also committed to improving the quality and authenticity of that inclusion. We are particularly aware that we do not have enough Black representation in our books. We are examining both our backlist and our new titles to address this.

    We are also working on books for our future publishing programme which tackle racism and inequality in a way that will help parents to talk about these issues with their children.

    • Browse some of our books about diversity and inclusion
    • Author Katie Daynes and Show Racism the Red Card explain why it's important to talk to children about racism in this Q&A

     

    Show Racism the Red Card

    Usborne has built a partnership with the children’s educational charity Show Racism the Red Card. Their courses and conferences educate 50,000 young people and 6,000 adults every year, working towards making Britain a safer, more tolerant place to live.

    We are currently collaborating with Show Racism the Red Card on two anti-racism titles, which will be published soon:

    • Lift-the-flap First Questions & Answers: What is racism? written by Katie Daynes and Jordan Akpojaro, illustrated by Sandhya Prabhat (September 2021)

    • Lift-the-flap Questions and Answers about Racism, written by Jordan Akpojaro, illustrated by Ashley Evans (January 2022)

    We shall be supporting Show Racism the Red Card through charitable donations, as well as payment for their consulting. We are also donating copies of the books published ‘in association with Show Racism the Red Card’ for them to distribute in schools. They are providing feedback on a range of new titles that we’re working on (not just those focusing on anti-racism, but across a broad range of topics), and providing staff training for all Usborne employees.

     

    Show Racism the Red Card logo

    Pathways Into Children's Publishing

    Pathways Into Children’s Publishing is an illustration programme for artists from diverse backgrounds. This two-year programme is for talented and ambitious artists who want to be the next generation of children’s book illustrators. Launched in 2019, it’s run by not-for-profit children’s literature agency Pop Up Projects and House of Illustration, and funded by Arts Council England’s National Lottery Projects Grants and universities and publishers, including Usborne.

    Illustrators who take part in Pathways will receive masterclasses and tutorials from illustrators and university tutors, as well as art directors from publishing houses. They will be mentored throughout the programme and will create and publish a body of work, the best of which will be sold at House of Illustration and Round Table Books.

    • Find out more about the Pathways Into Publishing mentees, and see samples of their work.

     

    Pathways logo

    Megaphone 

    Megaphone is a writing programme which aims to amplify the voices of writers of colour in British children’s literature. This writer development and mentoring scheme gives support to Black, Asian and other Minority Ethnic writers as they write their first novel for children or teenagers. 

    Set up by author Leila Rasheed, Megaphone received funding from Arts Council England and the Publishers’ Association in its first year. In 2020-2021, Megaphone will be supported by Usborne, with their donation paying for the fees of all candidates on the one-year programme.  

    Stephanie King, Commissioning Fiction Editor at Usborne Publishing and volunteer at Megaphone says: “I am so excited to be part of the Megaphone project, consciously and proactively seeking out stories which speak authentically to young readers growing up in our diverse society. Books initiate change by firing the imagination and starting important conversations, so it’s about time we started working to nurture talented voices whose stories may previously have been overlooked or marginalised.”

    • Read more from Stephanie on why we need diverse books

     

    Megaphone logo

    Everybody In – an Inclusion and Diversity Charter for the Children's Book World

    The Everybody In charter was launched by Inclusive Minds in 2015 and we were one of the first publishers to sign up to it. The key aim of the Everybody In charter is to help everyone involved in the book world make books more inclusive.  The charter was developed in close liaison with publishers, booksellers, librarians, authors, illustrators, teachers, and trade organisations.Everyone who signs up to the Everybody In charter must make a pledge – a public commitment to what they are going to do. You can read Usborne’s pledge on the Everybody In website.

     

    Everbody In logo

    Usborne policy on gender

    We believe that every child is different – we wouldn’t want it any other way – but that those differences are based on personality and opportunity, not on gender. In 2014 we were the first children’s publisher to confirm that we would not be publishing books that said in the title that they were ‘for boys’ or ‘for girls’. We believe that books are for all children. Usborne took part in The Fawcett Society’s Commission on Gender Stereotypes in Early Childhood and contributed to the resulting report 'UNLIMITED POTENTIAL Report of the Comission on Gender Stereotypes in Early Childhood'.
    • Read our policy on gender equality in full here

     

    Fawcett Society logo

    A note about partner relationships: We are proud to work with all the organisations listed on this page, who are helping us to move forward in the essential area of inclusion and diversity. We are thankful for their input, but want to be clear that working with them does not constitute their endorsement of our products.

    Useful Links

    • Buying Options
    • Newsletter Sign-Up
    • Privacy Policy
    • Cookie Settings
    • Terms & Conditions
    • Modern Slavery Statement

    Menu

    • Books
    • Activities For Kids
    • Quicklinks
    • About Us
    • Blog
    • Fact of the Week

    Contact

    FAQ and Help

    Trade Enquiries

    Press Information

     

    Connect

    • Follow Us on Facebook
    • Follow Us on Twitter
    • Follow Us on Pinterest
    • Follow Us on Instagram

     

    About Us

    Usborne is one of the world’s leading independent book publishers. We are proud to be a family business that aims to create brilliant books for children of all ages.

    ©2023 Usborne Publishing Limited

    Site by Superb