Moon Lane founder Macfarlane wins £10k prize for work on equality in children’s books

Author, bookseller and social entrepreneur Tamara Macfarlane has been awarded a £10,000 Cambridge Social Innovation Prize for her work raising equality in children’s books. 

Macfarlane, whose books include Dragon World (DK Children) and the Amazing Esme series (Hodder Children’s Books), is the founder and co-owner of Moon Lane, a specialist children’s bookseller established in 2003 to raise equality of access and representation in children’s books and in the publishing industry.

She is one of four recipients of the Cambridge Social Innovation Prize 2022, awarded by Trinity Hall and the Cambridge Centre for Social Innovation at the University of Cambridge, made annually to support the development of “extraordinary founder-c.e.o.s" of growth-stage social enterprises.

The prize also includes mentoring from experts at Cambridge Judge Business School and support from an expanding community of social innovators at Trinity Hall, which aims to help the winners develop the skills, resources and networks they need to create more impact from their work.

Macfarlane said: “I applied for the prize because the Cambridge Social Innovation Prize offers a unique opportunity to learn from mentors who are leaders in the social ventures field, while becoming part of a wider network highlighting the many ways in which business can be used for positive and impactful social change. I am delighted and hugely honoured to be chosen as one of the four winners of this award. It could not have happened at a better time both for my own personal leadership development and for Moon Lane."

Cambridge Social Ventures programme director Nicole Helwig added: “Tamara makes a difference by addressing the lack of representation in children’s books. In doing so, she paves a way for change in the bookselling and publication industries, enabling diverse authorship and broadening the offerings available to young readers and their families”