‘The Princes and The Treasure’, a children’s fairy tale following the story of two princes who fall in love, was released in February by American writer Jeffrey A Miles.

Speaking to The Advocate about the inspiration behind the story Miles explained that while watching a performance including princes and princesses at an amusement park he remembered how it felt as a child to

He said: “[Realise] that the handsome prince only fell in love with the beautiful princess. I knew that I was never going to be a handsome prince because I was never going to fall in love with my own beautiful princess. That story was never going to happen for me.”

In May of this year the campaign #WeNeedDiverseBooks launched in a three day online event. The project began trending on Twitter on 29 April and aimed to bring attention to the lack of diverse books available, particularly to children and young adults.

Drawing attention to statistics such as that only 3% of 3,600 American books reviewed in 2012 were about African American people and 1.8% written by African American authors, the #WeNeedDiverseBooks facilitated discussion through social media, encouraged consumers to purchase diverse books and recommended a variety of such books.

The concept was to inform and empower young readers by promoting literature which portrays characters they can relate to and recognise, with a focus on groups generally neglected in young adult and children’s fiction as well as minority groups such as LGBT people.

Miles’ book has received praise from both LGBT and straight parents, facilitating discussions about LGBT rights and equal marriage with children.

He has already begun work on a sequel to the book and envisions three books in total.

The book is available in 137 countries. It can be bought from Amazon, Waterstones, Foyles and Barnes and Noble, and is available from all major e-book retails including Amazon Kindle, Apple iBooks and Kobo Books.

Click here to see TEDx talk by novelist and activist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie on the importance of diverse books, and the damage caused by the “single story”.