LAURA BUSH’S choice of Mary Hoffmann’s Amazing Grace as one of her favourite, must-read children’s books may seem like ducking out from naming JK Rowling or Philip Pullman, both anathema to the fundamentalist Christian lobby.

In fact, it is an inspired one. Americans have always taken picture-books seriously as an art form, thanks to the native genius of Maurice Sendak and Ludwig Bemelmans, but Amazing Grace is exactly the kind of book to appeal to the can-do American attitude.

First published in 1991 by Frances Lincoln, the ground-breaking picture book publisher who died last year, it has become phenomenally successful in Britain and the US as one of the first picture books to feature a portrait of a black child on the cover.

This month, Amazing Grace is the centrepiece of the Black History Month exhibition at London’s Swiss Cottage Library, but in America it has acquired even greater fame.

Barbara Bush, as First Lady, had it read to her by Miss Piggy on The Muppets, which is probably how Laura Bush got to hear of it, and it has been made into a play in the US, with Grace dolls being a feature in many households.

Grace is a girl who loves stories, and who plays at being every character she reads about, from Joan of Arc and Helen of Troy to Mowgli and Anansi the Spider.

Bursting with creativity and feistiness, she can’t see why she shouldn’t audition for the part of Peter Pan in her school play. Then one girl tells her she can’t do this because she’s a girl, and another tells her she can’t do it because she’s black.

Heartbroken, Grace’s confidence ebbs away, until her grandmother takes her to see a famous black ballerina “from back home in Trinidad”, and shows her that she can be anything she wants.

It’s one of those simple, yet profoundly moving, stories that confronts sexism and racism, accepts that they exist, and transcends them through a child’s honesty, humour, imagination and hope.

Hoffman has written more than 80 books for children since 1971, and although Amazing Grace is her most famous work, selling over 1.5 million copies in English, her campaign against racism has been a persistent feature of her work. This year Hoffman also edited Lines in the Sand, inspired by fury at the Iraq war.

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