B.C. academic challenges narrative on food insecurity in Canada by writing children’s novel

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Seven years ago, Jennifer Black watched her young children, who were three years old and five years old at the time, participate in several food bank drives organized by their school. These collections were intended to teach students about community outreach and the importance of helping those less privileged than themselves.

While Prof. Black, an associate professor of food, nutrition and health at the University of British Columbia, valued the hard work her children, their classmates and teachers put into helping food banks, she couldn’t help but feel troubled about how food banks have been relied upon as a permanent solution to food insecurity and hunger and the lack of solutions to this entrenched issue. She also wanted children to be able to question how hunger and poverty can be avoided.

“These conversations are really hard to have, especially with kids,” said Prof. Black. In 2018, she reached out to a fellow academic, Queen’s University health studies professor Elaine Power, to help her find resources for kids on the topic.

“We put out a call to over a thousand scholars in North America, asking if there were any books we could use to help children critically engage with food insecurity,” Prof. Black said. “We found almost nothing.”

Every book on the subject followed the same formula: a struggling family receives food from a food bank or a charitable neighbour, and by the end, things seem to improve. For decades, children’s books addressing food insecurity have often taken a simplistic, feel-good approach – one that emphasizes charity and individual responsibility over systemic change.

“We often see a beautiful, blonde protagonist celebrating the wonderfulness of food banks. A privileged child spending time at the food bank is not going to alleviate the structural inequalities that actually lead to poverty and food insecurity,” said Prof. Black.

“We have spent 40 years relying on food banks, and it is not working.”

According to Statistics Canada’s Canadian Income Survey published in April, 2024, 22.9 per cent of households experienced food insecurity in 2022. This translates to approximately 8.7 million Canadians. Individuals in single-parent families continue to be the most vulnerable, with 43.4 per cent experiencing food insecurity, followed by unattached non-seniors – individuals under 65 who live alone and do not have a partner or dependants – at 30.5 per cent.

Food banks across Canada experienced an unprecedented surge in demand with more than two million visits in March, 2024 – the highest number in the country’s history, according to a study from Food Banks Canada. This represents a 6-per-cent increase from the previous year and a staggering 90-per-cent rise from March, 2019.

Prof. Black, Prof. Power and Acadia University associate professor of nutrition and dietetics Dr. Jennifer Brady came together in 2019 to write their own children’s book on food insecurity.

Their first attempt didn’t go so well.

“Imagine three professors writing a kid’s book – we ended up writing a factual, research book on food insecurity,” Prof. Brady laughs.

So the professors worked with writer Dian Day and artist Amanda White in 2021 to help tailor their book to a younger audience and make it educational and creative at the same time.

The result is a graphic novel with a working title, Stuffing the Bus. Their book is scheduled to be published next year.

“Art can communicate things differently,” Ms. White says. “There’s humour in the book, and humour helps make tough topics more accessible.”

In a pivotal scene in the book, young Mila watches her best friend Kit gobble three bananas in a row, and Mila mistakes her hunger for rudeness.

In another scene, Kit’s classmates fill a school bus with canned and packaged goods for the local food bank. Kit carefully examines each product and breaks down when she sees the package is damaged or beyond its ‘best before’ date. Gradually, Mila begins to understand Kit’s struggle with hunger.

The 220-page graphic novel, to be published by Second Story Press, aims to introduce young readers to broader social issues, helping them understand that hunger is not just about a lack of food, but a lack of access caused by economic structures. It will be accompanied by educational resources designed to help teachers, parents and caregivers facilitate in-depth discussions about food insecurity.

“I want kids to question the messages they receive about food insecurity and recognize they have power. Their power is age-appropriate – small in some ways – but real,” said Ms. Day.

Unlike many children’s books, this graphic novel does not wrap up food insecurity with a tidy, happy ending.

“Kit is still food insecure,” Ms. Day says. “The idea is to encourage kids to ask questions – to not accept the world as it is.”

Prof. Black adds that the book’s open-ended nature is deliberate.

“We want it to be truthful in its complexity,” she says. “There’s no ‘saviour’ who fixes food insecurity with a single act of kindness. Instead, we want kids to think about what it takes to change a system.”