The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH) has published a report looking at child health and wellbeing in the UK. The report brings together evidence across 12 indicators of child health...
The House of Common’s Education Committee has published a report examining the state of children’s social care in England. The inquiry looked at the system as a whole, as well as focusing on key areas...
For the past 35 years, various governments have claimed to have variations on a similar set of goals for the UK economy: decarbonise; spread more wealth and growth out of London; end the housing crisis;...
This interesting writer always focuses on children who are experiencing particularly difficult times in their lives. From personal correspondence I know that this is because of incidents in her own background and...
This chilling YA novel explores the disbelief and then despair of Sat, a young British Punjabi Sikh lad who is haunted by the disappearance of his married older sister, Jas. The prevalence of so called ‘honour’ violence...
It is still relatively unusual to find a children’s picture book where people with...
The fact that this book is subtitled An American Lyric and has been nominated for awards in the category of poetry might reasonably lead you to think this is a collection of verse – and you would be just about as wrong...
Steve Brown has spent many years working to support children and young people with autism spectrum disorder in all its many manifestations. This book is a straight-talking and often humorous guide to managing the...
’X+Y’ is a movie released in March 2015 directed by Morgan Matthews and starring Asa Butterfield (previous credits include ‘Hugo’ and ‘The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas’) as Nathan, a child with autism. The film sets up...
It took me a long time to get round to reading this book, despite many good reviews. I think that I was nervous about the tone of the story. I knew from all the hype that it was a love story about teenagers with cancer...
Benjamin Zephaniah knows how to communicate with his audience and they love him because his voice cuts through the formal or the pompous and invariably hits its target. As a writer for teenagers he has tried to stay...
‘Hate’ Alan Gibbons writes big stories aimed at the teenage reader and he fills them full of ‘issues’ – racism, homophobia, domestic violence, terrorism. Gibbons cares about these things and he wants his readers to...
On Queer Street: A Social History of British Homosexuality, 1895-1995 by Hugh David You know what it’s like. You go out, you buy a book and you add it to your pile marked ‘to be read’. And then, sometimes, you just...
