Farrah Serroukh - Research and Development Director

Farrah is an experienced teacher who has taught across the primary school age range. She held several leadership posts in areas including Literacy, EAL, EMA and Inclusion. She has always been a passionate advocate of every child’s right to access high quality literature and experience the best education possible. Her interests in this regard led to her study of an MA in Bilingualism in Education. She coordinates CLPE’s partnership and regional work and is the author of CLPE’s Reflecting Realities Survey of Ethnic Representation within UK Children’s Literature, which is the first of its kind in the history of UK children’s publishing. Farrah was awarded the Brenda Eastwood Award in recognition of her pioneering work on ethnic representation in children’s literature at the UKLA's 55th International Conference 2019 and also received the prestigious NATE Diversity and Inclusion Award in 2021.

Farrah has also been a judge on the Klaus Flugge Prize 2019, the Branford Boase Award 2022, British Book Awards and the Little Rebel Awards. She sits on the REIYL Advisory Board, the PoP Up Pathways Programme Advisory Board, is a Letterbox Library Book Reviewer and Empathy Lab Book Reviewer .

Blogs and articles by Farrah:

Ten Best Reads 2019 for Books for Keeps

Winter Reads 2019 for Lantana 

Ethnic diversity in UK children's books for The Guardian

Reflecting Readers Realities in Children's Literature for Collaboroo (an online community for the teaching profession).

Beyond the Reading for Pleasure Agenda for NALDIC Quarterly Volume 15 Number 2 2015.  

​CLPE Blogs:

• Reflecting Realities: Degrees of Erasure in Children's Literature; 
• Reflecting Realities: Numbers Don't Tell the Full Story; 
• Reflecting Realities: Expecting more from the Shelf; 
• Why Reflecting Realities Matters;
• Reflecting Realities in Children's Literature       

Farrah's favourite places to read are (in order): bed, sofa, coffee shop, train.