About Us
Our Mission
Moon Lane Ink CIC is a not-for-profit Community Interest Company dedicated to addressing inequity in children's books.
Moon Lane is addressing inequity in children’s books: inequity of access, representation and roles in the publishing industry so that every child has access to books that enable them to feel seen, reflected, respected and valued, giving each and every child the opportunity to thrive.
Moon Lane Ink CIC has grown out of Tales on Moon Lane Children’s Bookshop.
​
We are based in Moon Lane Books at 300 Stanstead Road, London, SE23 1DE.
We offer Enterprise workshops to schools as well as an array of events throughout the year that support our mission.
Equality of Representation
We aim to stock a fully integrated range of books in our shop, reflecting London's diverse population in terms of gender, ethnicity, class, disability, socio-economic status, sexual-orientation and culture.
The range will develop as a work in progress, highlighting the best books that are currently available and helping to support emerging authors and illustrators from a diverse range of backgrounds and experiences.
We have also set up the London Schools' Book Fair in order to be able to take an integrated book range out into London's schools, offering a chance for all the children to see themselves reflected in the book selection. The new shop offers us the space to run teacher training on integrated school libraries, book corners and texts to support the curriculum.
Raising Equality of Access
There are key obstacles to children's engagement with books and we are continually trying to find ways to break down these obstacles and to make books more accessible for all children.
Through our primary and secondary enterprise days (where children plan and run their own pop-up school book fair) we teach and support enterprise skills which in-turn creates enthusiasm around books and reading for students who might not always engage with them otherwise.
The encouragement of peer recommendation helps to make the experience much more inclusive and to take down some of the barriers related to books.
We have also been running the London Schools' Festival of Books for the last seven years. The festival invites schools to bring classes along to the author events, enabling children from all backgrounds to experience the excitement of meeting an author.
Raising Equality of Roles Within the Industry
Our next round of recruitment will further focus on offering opportunities to young people from a range of backgrounds who are hoping to move into careers in bookselling and publishing.
This started initially with offering work experience places to our partner school, Harris Girl's Academy in East Dulwich.
We are planning to expand this to include centrally organising work placements with small independent publishers.
We offer a paid internship at Moon Lane Books.
Meet the Team
Tamara
Paul
Advisory Board
Our dedicated board generously contribute their time and professional expertise to the governance of Moon Lane Ink.
​
Aimee Felone is the co-founder of Knights Of, an inclusive children’s publisher whose primary focus is on hiring diversely and commissioning writers and illustrators from diverse backgrounds.
​
Ammara Isa is a trade marketing executive at Harper Collins, a publisher endeavoring to ensure that their employees and authors represent a wide variety of cultures and diverse backgrounds.
​
Chris Brown is Head of English at Harris Girls Academy East Dulwich, a secondary school in the heart of south east London where approximately 85% students come from minority-ethnic backgrounds.
​
Joseph Nhan-O’Reilly is Head of Education Policy and Advocacy at Save the Children, where he works alongside a global team of managers and educators committed to increasing access to and the quality of education around the world.
​
Kenan Hassan grew up in south-east London. He is Policy Officer and part of the Strategic Planning and Placemaking Team at Lewisham Council.
​
Martha Harris is a commissioning editor and journalist and regularly volunteers at Moon Lane Books, kindly supporting the business in various aspects.
​
Nicole King is a lecturer of literature at Goldsmiths University. Her own research focuses on the literary representations of black childhood and African-American and Caribbean works.
​
Paul Chin is the co-owner of Moon Lane Ink. Over the past ten years his business evolved to provide services for schools in south-east London, Moon Lane Ink provided him with an opportunity to broaden his involvement within the education sector and the wider community.
​
Sarah Shaffi is a freelance journalist and Little Tiger Group’s editor-at-large. She also co-founded BAME in Publishing a group for Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic backgrounds working in the publishing industry.
​
Sarah Parrott was born and has lived in South London all her life. She was a Primary Teacher and Head of English before establishing the highly successful Write Sparks. Through creative writing clubs and support in schools, Write Sparks helps to advance the talent of young and aspiring writers.
The Moon Lane Group
Tales on Moon Lane
Moon Lane Books
Moon Lane
Ramsgate
Tales on Moon Lane
Nanjing, China
Moon Lane
Education
Moon Lane TV
Moon Lane Ink
C.I.C.